The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3

by Kathryn Guare

  “I’m getting fairly tired of watching you wave that feckin’ thing around, Conor.”

  Conor lowered the gun with a terse obscenity of his own. “Sure, what do you expect, when you come rubbing up against my door in the middle of the night? What are you doing out here, anyway?”

  “Listening. I wasn’t going to wake you if you were sleeping.”

  “Obviously, I’m not.”

  “Yeah, obviously. Put your goddamned gun in a drawer and come with me. I want your help with something.”

  He followed Thomas down the hall and into Kavita’s apartment. Leaving the lights off, they walked through to the dining room where the laptop snoozed on the table, its revolving screen saver blitzing the room with erratic slivers of color.

  “What are you up to?” Conor whispered. His brother pointed him to a chair in front of the computer and sat down next to him, leaning in to speak directly into his ear.

  “I hadn’t thought about it until you said something,” he said. “In a couple of days, you and I are going to be sitting in a room with a Russian arms dealer, and we’re going to hoover twenty million dollars out of a US government bank account and put it into his. Then we’re going to sit back and pray to God somebody comes to arrest him before he bolts with it. It’s a dodgy bit of business, don’t you think?”

  “I do, of course.” Conor frowned and picked at a piece of candle wax on the table. “Wasn’t I trying to say so earlier? You might have piped up then about it.”

  Thomas shook his head impatiently. “Wouldn’t have made a difference. Walker wasn’t having it. Costino has him dead paranoid about the lawyers. He’s afraid they’ll somehow take it all away from him if he doesn’t do it the way they want. That’s fine if it goes according to plan, but what if it goes wrong? What if the DEA can’t get its money back? Who’s going to take the fall for losing twenty million dollars?”

  Abruptly, Conor stopped fidgeting. He rested his hands on the table and sat motionless. “You think Walker would try to pin that on us.”

  “I don’t think he’s planning to,” Thomas said. “But I can see him making the leap if he has to. We’re the ones going into the room and shifting the money, Conor, and who the hell are we? Two ‘joe soaps,’ right? A couple of nobodies—except one’s on the run for robbing a mafia don and the other’s a money launderer wanted for grant fraud. Walker can turn that into whatever he wants, especially if he needs to get himself off the hook.”

  Conor’s initial skepticism died away in a low whistle. “Okay. Fair point, but what can we do about it now, short of bolting ourselves?”

  “I’ve done it already. I thought you could make it better.” Thomas reached over and woke the laptop with a sharp tap on its keyboard.

  Squinting against the eruption of light, Conor saw a login page appear on the screen. There were no identifying characteristics, just plain black text against a stark white background. He stared at it, rubbing a finger over the stubble on his chin.

  “What are we logging in to?”

  “Vasily Dragonov’s new bank account.”

  “Oh, shit. Thomas—”

  “It’s a legitimate joint account,” Thomas interrupted. “I set it up by phone with a bank in South America about an hour ago.”

  “You rang a bank in South America? How does that work?”

  The exclamation was not loud, but it echoed like a shout in the otherwise silent apartment and Thomas flapped a hand in annoyance.

  “Whisht, for the love of God, will you ever keep it down? We’ll be having the whole place awake. Yes, I rang up a bank in South America. I’ve opened and closed bank accounts all over the world for years now, Conor. What about the title ‘money launderer’ don’t you understand, for Jesus’ sake?”

  “I understand more than I ever wanted to,” Conor fired back, acidly. Thomas sighed.

  “Well, amen to that, brother. Listen to me now, though. Durgan’s got a fellow in South America who opens accounts. I’ve used him before. It’s another joint account, under the name of the same shell company Dragonov used for the other one. I had all the information from when we first opened it. No lawyer in the world could deny this account is identical to the others. The only difference is Dragonov doesn’t know about it.”

  “So he can’t get it out, but we can,” Conor said. “Come through like heroes in a crisis.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Doesn’t this seem like the kind of thing the DEA should have thought of on their own?”

  “Seems like it,” Thomas agreed. His deadpan stare indicated that no deeper comprehension—and certainly no comfort—would be gained from pursuing that line of discussion. He hit the keyboard again to refresh the login screen and Conor bowed to the inevitable.

  “Right. You want me to assign a shatterproof password, I suppose.”

  Thomas smiled. “You’re seeing out of all three eyes tonight, mate. Work away with your rare old tune. It’ll take up to thirty-six notes of it.”

  “I should teach it to you as well,” Conor argued as he began entering the code. “You ought to know it, just in case something—”

  Thomas clapped a hand on his shoulder, pulling him gently around to face him.

  “Nothing is going to happen to you, Conor. “Do you understand me, now? Nothing. I’ll not let it.”

  “Yeah. Same for you.” He banged a fist lightly against his brother’s arm. “Period.”

  He assigned the password, and when it was done, they stared at the screen until the monitor blinked into sleep again, which coincided closely with the piercing blast of a whistle that made them jump. It came from the garden just outside. All over India, even on the peaceful east bank of Rishikesh, the night watchman was a ubiquitous presence during the early morning hours, traditionally armed with a whistle and a wooden staff. They watched the figure drift past the dining room window like an apparition. When the rhythmic tap along the walkway had faded, Thomas turned to Conor, his face wan and tired.

  “I wonder, will it ever end,” he sighed. “Even if we get through this, Durgan is still out there somewhere, and that scares me more than all the rest. I’ve no idea where he is, and I’ve never understood how he knows so much about you.”

  “Maybe someone is telling him about me.” Conor regarded his brother cautiously. “That’s Sedgwick’s theory, that someone bigger is calling the shots, someone who can access information about me whenever he wants. He thinks Durgan is just an errand boy. A sort of clown.”

  “Horse shit,” Thomas said without visible emotion. “He’s one twisted son of a bitch, the farthest thing from a clown. How would Sedgwick know? He’s never met him.”

  “Walker has. He had that meeting with him in—what?” Conor interrupted his own argument, seeing Thomas shake his head back and forth.

  “Walker’s never seen him, either. It wasn’t Durgan who met him in Geneva.”

  A sharp intake of air locked itself in Conor’s lungs for several seconds before exiting in a gust. “How do you know that?”

  “I didn’t at first, but then Durgan told me himself, last September, when he called to tell me you’d be coming over here.” Thomas stared out the window. “He thought the Geneva meeting was a trap. Walker was going to make a deal on the spot if it had gone well. He’d give one criminal a free pass and a truckload of money in exchange for help catching another one. But Durgan got spooked. He sent Desi to the meeting instead, and Desi made a hames of it.”

  “Who’s Desi?”

  Thomas closed the laptop and stared down at it before answering. “Desmond Moore and his pal Ciaran. The two fellows from Armagh I hired, when this whole ball of shite first got rolling. Desi Moore. Poor, stupid bastard.”

  “Why? What happened to him?” Conor asked.

  Thomas rolled his head to look at him with an unblinking gaze. “He’s dead. That’s the real reason Durgan rang, I’m sure. Wanted to hear the fear in my voice. Said Desi had fucked up. Said he’d suspected for a long time that I had too, that it wou
ld be a lot better for me if I came clean with it before you got here. Said if he found out later I’d been cutting him out of something, we’d both be getting the Desi Moore treatment. I haven’t had any contact with him since then. Threw the mobile away, shut down the e-mail account, and came up here until Sedgwick called saying I’d better do something with you before Walker had you thrown in jail.”

  “Why didn’t you tell them Durgan suspects something?”

  Thomas shrugged. “Too scared. They need me at this point, but they don’t need you. What if they tried protecting me by getting him after you instead? Do you understand now, why I wanted you kept out of it? Why I wanted you sent home without knowing what was really going on over here?”

  “Yeah.” Conor ran a hand over his face before asking the question he didn’t want answered. “How can you be certain Durgan killed Desi?”

  “Because he sent me a picture, Conor,” his brother whispered. “E-mailed it to me. And Desi’s face was the only part of him left I could recognize.”

  Back in bed a half-hour later, Conor’s sleepless mind returned again to the symbolic relevance of the ‘period,’ and to the wistful question Thomas had posed.

  Will it ever end?

  In a musical composition, a set of chords known as a closed cadence forms the punctuative counterpart to the written word’s period. Marking the end of a section within the piece—or more dramatically indicating its conclusion—the closed cadence and its definitive tonic chord signals closure. In doing so, it supplies a fulfillment the pricked ear hardly knew it yearned for: a release of tension, an accession to completion and rest.

  He had always reveled in compositions that toyed with that nebulous desire, that withheld gratification until the next measure, and then the next, letting the tension build inexorably as the listener’s heart fills, waiting for the instant when the music will crest and resolve.

  But then it doesn’t come.

  Instead of the anticipated closed cadence, the music slides to a “deceptive cadence.” It goes up, back, sideways, across— somewhere new. Somewhere unexpected. The musician works the strings, and the process begins again. The ear quivers in exquisite torture, still waiting for release, still aching for a tonic chord.

  33

  They departed Rishikesh before dawn the following morning, while the east bank still lay hushed and frosty under a twinkling film of rime. Conor was waiting for the others in the ashram’s courtyard when Kavita came out to him carrying a white Pashmina scarf.

  For the past several days, she’d been supplementing his tropical wardrobe with cold-weather clothes. An endless assortment of long-sleeved woolen kurtas and thick sweaters had been finding their way into his bedroom until he’d felt obliged to stop the madness.

  “It’s more clothes than I left London with, Kavita,” he protested, and she’d responded with unusual severity.

  “Again I am telling you, Conor. You are feeling quite well now, but you must take care. Kashmir is very cold just now. It is not good for you. Cold Kashmiri air going down inside your chest is not good to you. It is a very dangerous thing.”

  Abashed, he’d resisted any further objections and stood patiently motionless as she coiled the scarf around his neck.

  He caught a glimpse at her eyes as she finished. They were dark and somber, too much like the eyes he had left thousands of miles behind on a late summer day that felt like a hundred years ago. When her hands moved from the scarf to hover— one on top of the other—over his chest, the gooseflesh surged over his skin in waves.

  “You will need all of your strength,” she breathed, as though speaking to herself.

  “Whatever I’ve got, ji, it’s what you’ve given me.” He took her hands and pressed them gently. “We should be back in a few days. I’ll see you again soon, please God.”

  “Yes. You will be seeing me here again, beta, but I think it will not be soon.”

  She tried to smile for him, realizing she had frightened him. Before she could say any more, the others arrived, and Walker was anxious to be going. Conor bent to touch her feet, and she kissed the top of his head. Without another word, they parted.

  The furriness of sleep was quickly blown out of them as they crossed the wind-swept Ram Jhula pedestrian bridge to the waiting Range Rover on the opposite bank. The seven-passenger vehicle had been stocked the night before with bottled water and a picnic hamper supplied by the ashram’s cooking staff.

  Apart from Tony Costino, who was well rested and aggravatingly buoyant, none of them felt inclined for conversation during the first few hours of the ride. The tense quiet inside the SUV gave Conor plenty of time to brood on the troubling emotions Kavita’s parting words aroused.

  After several hours of useless worry, he put it aside. He couldn’t hope to interpret the obstacles Kavita—or, for that matter, his mother—had sensed were ahead of him. Obsessing over it only added to the strain on his overstretched nerves.

  Driving helped. They all took a turn in the rotation after Costino’s initial stint, and he discovered Indian roads required a level of concentration that erased any inclination to daydream. He volunteered for a second shift when the first was finished. Altogether, he spent a good six hours navigating around various obstacles and marveling at the ever-changing panorama as they rode deeper into Jammu and Kashmir.

  Sedgwick was at the wheel now. After fourteen hours on the road, the journey was concluding as it began—in darkness—and the mood inside the Range Rover was one of tedium. Conor stared out the window while his brain whispered nonsense.

  Porter cake. Velvet on the tongue. Easy going down. A dense, sweet fantasy, with a perfect blend of nuts, dried peel, and sultanas delivered in every bite.

  It was an old television advert from home. Now that the announcer’s honey-soaked voice had taken root in his head, complete with the image of a succulent porter cake rotating on a plate, he found it hard to think about anything else. It was an absurd but welcome respite from what had been rubbing against his mind for the rest of the day.

  He turned away from the window. The scenery had been spectacular throughout the day, but it was too dark to see anything now, and since they had been steadily corkscrewing up a narrow track against the side of a mountain for the past several minutes, he didn’t much mind the obscurity. He twisted around, inadvertently—or perhaps not—kicking the foot of the sleeping Costino, whose puppy-like energy had finally expired a few hours earlier.

  “Porter cake,” he recited to Thomas, who was in the seat behind him. “Velvet on the tongue.”

  His brother indicated recognition with a low, animal moan. “Easy going down. Wouldn’t I like to tackle a slab or two,” Thomas sighed. “That’s hitting below the belt. I’d eat the beard of Moses, I’m that hungry.”

  “Nothing left in the hamper?”

  “Raked hollow.” Thomas rolled a meaningful glance at the yawning Costino.

  “What’s porter cake?” their younger colleague asked. He was blinking in confusion at being jarred awake by a shot to the anklebone.

  Conor blinked back in light ridicule. “Never had a slice of porter cake in all your sad life? Poor bastard. I could never make you understand what you’ve missed.”

  Unlike his verdict regarding Walker, after careful consideration, Conor had determined that he did dislike Costino. Heartily. The baby-faced agent he had taken for a recruit fresh from college was actually the same age as he was, which made his pretensions of doe-eyed innocence even more grating.

  His pose as an eager-to-please subordinate was a better act than his attempt as a Crimean mobster, but having played a role himself recently, Conor knew how far it needed to settle in for the charade to be convincing. Costino’s natural self was not buried deep enough. It needed a sharp eye, but when he paid attention, Conor could detect the shrewd glances and flashes of naked ambition.

  Instead of looking annoyed, Costino laughed. “I love listening to you guys, especially in that patois you sometimes use.”

&n
bsp; “Patois?” Thomas, who did look annoyed, huffed in disgust. Conor merely shrugged.

  “It’s called Gaeilge, and it’s actually classified as a standard language, but never mind. Happy to provide the evening’s entertainment.”

  A squeal of brakes sounded as the Range Rover violently swerved to the right.

  “Sorry, boys,” Sedgwick said from the driver’s seat. “Hard to see the turns in the dark.”

  Walker, riding shotgun and sleeping soundly until that moment, lurched up, instantly wide-awake. “Are we here?” he asked.

  “Wherever the hell ‘here’ is,” Sedgwick said. “I’m following your directions. Feels like we’re climbing Everest.”

  “We’re through Tangmarg?”

  “Five or six kilometers back,” Sedgwick confirmed, “and about a thousand feet down.”

  “Then we’re on the Gulmarg access road.” Walker put his face to the window, peering into the darkness. “We should be hitting an army checkpoint soon. The safe house is somewhere at the top.”

  While sounding imminent, the top of the hill proved to be an additional fifteen minutes away, and before they reached it, they encountered the expected checkpoint. The entrance to Gulmarg had closed at sundown, but Walker produced an impressive document festooned with official stamps for the inspecting officers. The gate was raised, and they were given directions for following a restricted military road to their destination.

  Hidden among the trees on Gulmarg’s western outskirts, the property was owned by the Indian Army, and the Criminal Investigations Division in Srinagar had secured its use for them that night. Walker had called it a safe house, but as Conor climbed from the SUV, weary and stiff, he thought “sheep barn” more accurately described it.

  It was perched on the hillside and constructed from rough-hewn pine. A set of stairs and a wide deck had been added—perhaps in an effort to disguise its original purpose. The interior was a single large room divided evenly into areas that emphasized its two main functions: sleeping and eating. Precisely spaced army cots lined the wall on the right-hand side; a dining table and kitchen area dominated on the left.