The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3

by Kathryn Guare

  Caught halfway between sitting and standing, he offered an insincere pout of apology and then spun in his tracks and hurried to the dining room.

  “Nice of you to find time for us in your busy schedule,” Sedgwick said.

  Conor joined them at the table, and now all three of them sat facing the laptop, like petitioners before an oracle. He raised an eyebrow at Thomas. “What have I missed?”

  “Exactly nothing,” Thomas said. “We’re waiting for the bloody power to come back.”

  “What about the BGAN?” Conor asked. “Couldn’t we try that? Nice to get some use from it after hauling it all the way over here.”

  “Shit, I forgot you had it.” Sedgwick’s eyes widened hopefully.

  “What’s a bee-gan?” Thomas asked.

  “Broadband Global Area Network,” Conor replied. “Fancy yoke that connects a laptop to the Internet via satellite link. I don’t even know if it works or not.”

  “Get it and let’s try,” Sedgwick said. “We can set it up out in the garden. Bring your laptop, too. The battery is dead in this one.”

  He retrieved the BGAN from his room, and a few minutes later they were sitting on the ground in Kavita’s Ayurvedic medicine garden examining it. The equipment was remarkably compact—a white, rectangular panel slightly larger than the laptop and a single connecting cable. When the rapid beep of the terminal indicated a successful link to the satellite, he switched on the laptop. After a moment, an intricate, horizontal tree diagram appeared on the screen.

  “What the hell is that?” Thomas asked, leaning in for a closer look.

  “The log-in screen,” Conor sighed. “I’d forgotten about it. There’s a nine-character password entry for each line of the diagram.”

  Sedgwick gave an incredulous snort. “There’s got to be at least twenty lines. There’s no freaking way you remember the password for every one of them.”

  Without responding, Conor began tapping on the keys, humming to himself and occasionally lifting a hand to let his fingers wiggle above the keyboard. As the lines filled up, Sedgwick’s smirk faded.

  “It’s a musical password.” Delighted, Thomas bounced a fist against his knee.

  Conor nodded. “It’s a good chunk from the staccato jig section of the Korngold concerto. I’m a bit rusty. Let’s see if I played it right.”

  He hit Enter and grimaced as the screen went black. A second later it lit up again, icons popping up as it whirred to life. Another few strokes established the Internet connection, and he handed the laptop over to Thomas.

  “All yours,” he said. “Go get the mail, and I’ll get us a snack.”

  When he returned with a bowl of fruit a few minutes later, the mood had darkened. Sedgwick was on his feet pacing the garden, while Thomas remained seated on the ground frowning pensively.

  “It doesn’t make any goddamn sense,” Sedgwick fumed. “Look through it again. Does it read like they’re afraid of a trap? Why would they be suspicious now?”

  “Maybe because it is a trap?” Thomas said, sotto voce. He pulled the laptop closer and silently read the message again.

  “More issues?” Conor asked, lowering himself to the ground.

  “You might say that, yeah. Change of venue.” Thomas gave him a sidelong glance and looked up at Sedgwick. “I don’t know, it looks pretty straightforward. He doesn’t want to sully the holiness of the ashram by doing business here.”

  “Oh, for . . . they’ve been doing business here for the past five years!” Sedgwick squawked.

  “Dragonov hasn’t,” Thomas replied.

  “What about Conor?” Sedgwick demanded. “Are you sure they’re not nervous about him?”

  “Doesn’t sound like it. They’re congratulating me for expanding business inside the family, looking forward to meeting him, and seeing me. And why wouldn’t they?” Thomas added, still staring at the screen. “I’ve been a good customer all these years. They trust me, poor bastards. They’re fine with everything except the location.”

  He turned back to Conor. “They’re saying Dragonov wants us to meet him in Gulmarg a week from today. We’ll take care of business, and then he’ll fly us all down to the airport in Dehra Dun, and we’ll drive over here.”

  “Where’s Gulmarg? Far away?”

  “Far enough,” Thomas said. “It’s in Jammu-Kashmir, about eight hundred kilometers north of here, a little west of Srinagar. It’s a ski resort.”

  “A ski resort, in India? No shit?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Up and coming destination. They’re trying to make it the Aspen of the East.”

  “Can we stay focused on the problem here, please?” Sedgwick snarled. “Why Gulmarg? What the fuck is in Gulmarg? He likes to ski?”

  “I think he’s got some investment property there, actually,” Thomas said. “I remember his lads mentioning it a while back. Said they were heading up there after our meeting.”

  Sedgwick rounded on him with an accusatory glare. “You never mentioned that. Seems like it would have been a good piece of news to share, don’t you think?”

  Thomas flushed angrily. “We talked all kinds of shite. It didn’t matter until now, did it? Why would I care where they feck off to once I was done with them? Why would you?”

  “All right. Hang on a minute.” Conor put a hand on his brother’s arm. “We’re not on to a productive line of discussion with this.”

  “You’ve got something brilliant to suggest, I suppose?” Sedgwick jeered.

  “I do, yeah,” he replied drily. “I suggest you stop stomping about, blattering like a six year old, and I suggest we consider the options. Sounds to me like there are two: either we tell them to feck off and call it a day, or we hump it up to Gulmarg. I doubt your man Walker is much interested in the first. So unless there’s an alternative I’m not seeing, we might as well talk about the second. Tell me if I’m missing something here, Agent Sedgwick. Do we have a choice?”

  Sedgwick continued stalking the garden for another minute before coming to a stop in front of them. Locking his fingers together, he placed both hands on top of his head and released a sigh of defeat.

  “You’re not missing anything. Too much is invested to pull back now. It just got a lot more complicated and a lot more dangerous, but we’re taking this guy down, so it looks like we’ll be humping it up to Gulmarg to do it.”

  32

  During daylight hours, the temperature in Rishikesh rose quickly, achieving a deliciously even, therapeutic warmth by mid-afternoon, but the air often grew damp and chilly once the sun disappeared, and it had been dark for over an hour.

  Without taking his eyes from the scene unfolding in front of him, Conor reached for the jacket he’d left lying on the steps. A gathering breeze—visible as an iridescent wrinkle sweeping across the water under the moonlight—gave the evening an extra bite. It fluttered the orange robes of a priest who was descending the steps of the ghat, accompanied by a young man cradling a bundle in his arms. They were about to perform sanjayama, the ritual immersion of ashes that was part of Hindu funeral rites.

  Conor shivered as he pulled on the jacket. He was out of practice with cooler temperatures after several months in the humid soup of Mumbai. Apparently, it was even colder farther north. Reports indicated winter held a firm grip on the region they would be heading for in the morning.

  He and Thomas had come to the ghat that evening to escape their pre-departure anxieties, leaving Sedgwick to contend with the manic demands of Walker and Costino. The two DEA agents had arrived earlier in the week. After three exhausting days of role-playing and worst-case scenario spinning, Conor thought the preparations had moved into a counterproductive phase of obsessive-compulsive repetition.

  At the first opportunity, he and his brother fled the premises, joining the throngs of pilgrims and tourists flocking to the Ganges for aarti. The ceremony took place each evening on the wide, marble ghat of Parmarth Niketan, one of the oldest and largest ashrams in Rishikesh.

  The boisterous,
jubilant service of music, song, and fire had ended now, and the crowds had dispersed, but the two of them continued to sit in the darkness, reluctant to return to a world so far removed from the joyful pageantry they’d just witnessed.

  “I’ve often wondered what happens to them,” Thomas said.

  “You have?” Jerking his gaze from the priest’s slow, stylized movements, Conor gave Thomas a glance of surprise. His brother did not often indulge in the contemplation of metaphysical mysteries. “The dead, you mean? What happens to their souls and . . . like that?”

  “The dead!” Thomas’s forehead puckered in consternation, and he gave a hoot of laughter. “I’m not talking about the dead, you eejit. I’m talking about those things.”

  He pointed down at the river’s edge where a boat-like basket of flowers with a small, guttering flame at its center bobbed on the water. It was one of many that worshippers had launched onto the river during the evening ceremony—a prayer of light offered to Mother Ganga, in thanks for her divine, eternal light. The basket had become trapped between two rocks.

  “I was just wondering how far they get,” Thomas explained. “Do they wash up on the beach farther down? Or maybe there’s some special wallah who goes down to catch them, so they can use them again?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. There’s a job for everyone in India.”

  Conor smiled, charmed by the imagery of someone stationed downstream, patiently waiting to catch the prayers of the faithful. Now that he’d seen it, the shipwrecked boat of marigolds troubled him. Impulsively, he jumped up and ran lightly down the stairs. Bracing one hand against a rock, he plucked the basket from the water and put it down again in the free-flowing current. As he climbed back up the stairs, even in the darkness, he could see Thomas grinning at him.

  “Laugh if you want.” Conor gave a self-conscious shrug. “It’s a prayer. It shouldn’t get stuck there.”

  “I wasn’t laughing,” Thomas assured him, gently. “I was just thinking you’re so much like Ma—in a good way. I’m even a bit more like her than I used to be. I’ve been up here a lot over the years. I’ve spent hours sitting right here, staring at the river. There’s something about it, isn’t there? It pulls at you, no matter where you are, even when you can’t see it. Gets under your skin, somehow, and you find yourself wanting to get back to it. Know what I mean?”

  “I do.”

  Caol áit.

  After a moment Conor added softly, “She’d be proud of you, Thomas. She never stopped believing in you.”

  “Ah, Jaysus, don’t. Please.” The protest came out as a thin, strangled whisper.

  “All right, I won’t, but it’s true all the same. She never did. Not once.”

  They stayed out for as long as they dared, like truant schoolboys, but at last they shuffled back to the ashram. When they slunk back into the conference room Walker had appropriated for their planning sessions, Sedgwick glanced up from a map he’d been studying, looking too tired to be angry with them.

  “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming back at all.” He leaned back with a yawn and pushed a handful of hair from his forehead.

  “Sorry to be gone so long.” Thomas gave his shoulder a friendly squeeze. “You look like hell, incidentally. Are you ever going to bed, at all?

  “Walker wants to do one more run-through,” Sedgwick said dispiritedly. “By the time we get to Gulmarg, we’ll be so over-rehearsed, it will be a miracle if they don’t see through it.”

  “Where is Walker?” Conor asked.

  “He’s . . . ” Sedgwick twirled a hand wearily at the door as it opened with a bang. Walker strode in with a brisk, powerful stride. Seeing Conor and Thomas, he stopped and glared at them.

  “Where the hell have you been for the past two hours?”

  “We needed a bit of a break,” Thomas replied. “We took a walk down to the ghat for the aarti.”

  “The ghat. You walked down to the ghat. For the aarti.” Walker jammed his fists onto his hips. The small, dark eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses flashed even more dangerously.

  Standing at attention with his shirtsleeves rolled up to expose a pair of hairy, muscular arms, Walker perfectly embodied a number of caricatures Conor could name—gym teacher, drill sergeant, or some kid’s particularly scary-looking dad. He had decided, however, after reflecting on it for three days, that he didn’t actively dislike Walker. The senior agent was tense and often irritable, but he was too candidly earnest to be despicable.

  “Gentlemen, is there something unclear about the mission we’re engaged in, here? Something confusing about the significance of it? This is a deadly serious business. We’re not tourists on vacation.”

  “Japers, are you serious?” Conor gaped with extravagant surprise. “Is this not the luxury package tour? It’s been such a fucking laugh-riot so far, you can see how I got confused.”

  “Very funny. Very glib.” Walker scowled and aimed an accusing eye at Sedgwick, who gave a helpless shrug.

  “What can I say? He’s Irish. They’re glib.” He bowed his head over the map, lips forcibly suppressing a telltale tremble. “Anyway, we’ve got the two of them back, so now where’s Costino?”

  “I sent him to bed,” Walker said. “He’s got first shift driving tomorrow. He needs to be fresh.”

  Thomas and Sedgwick shared a glance of withering irony. “Cute little hoor,” Thomas whispered. “Always works the angle to his advantage.”

  “Okay, men.” Walker checked his watch, threw his leg over a chair, and dropped into it. “Let’s run through this plan from the top.”

  The plan, insofar as they could control it, was kept as simple as possible. Having lost the home court advantage, Walker had attempted to regain the initiative by immediately flying to Srinagar with Costino, and from there they had driven to Gulmarg to execute a thorough site and perimeter inspection of the new venue before coming to Rishikesh.

  The designated rendezvous was Gulmarg Alpine Cottage. Discreet inquiries confirmed a Russian investment company had indeed purchased the hotel within the past eighteen months, with an eye toward transforming it into a timeshare resort. The new owner was expected to be there with some associates on the following Thursday. He would take up residence in the presidential suite.

  Their next stop had been the police headquarters in Srinagar. With no jurisdiction in India to make an arrest, the DEA needed to enlist local authorities for Dragonov’s apprehension. Walker had always known they would have to file an international arrest warrant with Interpol. He had just hoped to delay that move for as long as possible.

  “Like I said earlier . . . ” He tossed a copy of the warrant onto the table. “If Dragonov has penetrated Interpol and developed contacts there, we’re screwed.”

  “But your hand was forced,” Conor said, parroting back what they had all heard at least three times now. The senior agent seemed to believe repeating the story would have some positive impact on its outcome.

  “My hand was forced.” Walker’s index finger poked the air for emphasis. “We needed authorities in place up there immediately. So the arrest warrant got filed early.”

  “And the Criminal Investigation Department in Srinagar has booked a two-person team at the hotel posing as buddies on a skiing vacation,” Sedgwick chimed in mechanically. “They’re in the room next to the suite.”

  “Hope they know how to ski,” Thomas said, with a small smile.

  “Now, we keep this very clean and natural,” Walker continued. “Thomas will have the listening device. He’s got their trust, and they haven’t searched him for years. You both get inside the room, go through all the chitchat. We’ll run through the lines again in a minute—”

  Conor groaned and slouched down into his chair.

  “Which is one of the most important parts of this whole damned operation,” Walker enunciated imperiously. “If you don’t get him on tape saying what we need him to, the prosecution has no good case, and we’re wasting our time. Eventually, you get
around to the payment. You log in to our bank account, you transfer the payment to the joint account, and when it’s done you give the verbal cue and we—”

  “Whoa. Hang on a minute.” Conor sat upright. The latest recitation had uncovered a nuance he’d missed earlier. “You want the cue after the transfer? You want us to actually dump twenty million dollars into an account he can access? Not that it matters to me, but does that sound like a judicious risk with the US taxpayer’s money?”

  Walker brushed the query aside with an impatient wave. “Legal analysis says it’s the only way. Anyway, it’s a joint account.”

  “Yeah, but presumably he shifts it,” he persisted.

  “He won’t have time,” Walker said, flatly. “You just give the verbal cue, and CID will come in from next door and make the arrest. Game over. Period.”

  “But—”

  “I believe I said ‘period,’ McBride.”

  “Yeah, fine, ‘period.’” Conor abandoned further argument with a sigh.

  The plan was about as good as it could be. There was nothing to be gained by parsing its components individually but as he tossed around in bed later, Conor mused on Walker’s emphatic ‘period.’ Applied as standard grammatical notation, the period was a reassuring anchor that signaled closure. Used verbally to hammer the lid on question and debate, it had rather the opposite effect.

  Lifting his wristwatch from the night table, he angled it against a patch of moonlight, and dropped it back onto the table with a groan. Drowsily, he looked up at the ceiling and began tracing out a dimly visible network of cracks, but at the sound of a long, low creak in the hallway outside his door, he shot out of bed as though catapulted from it.

  He paused in the middle of the room before creeping to the door and held his breath to listen. Something brushed softly back and forth against the wood. Taking the knob in his hand, Conor gave it a quick twist and yanked the door open, thrusting the Walther into the opening ahead of him.

  Thomas leapt back from the door to the middle of the hall, stumbling and swearing in a guttural whisper.