The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3

by Kathryn Guare

  "Wait, what's that about Fort Monckton?" He snapped alert at the mention of the MI6 training facility in Gosport, England. This signaled the first hint of a shadow on the sun, and a good indication of a change in course. He gave a wistful glance at the program book, doubting he'd still be around for the concert scheduled to begin in less than an hour.

  "I said I went down a few days ago." Frank offered a patient smile. "Your reputation among your trainers lives on, you know. You made a strong impression on them. A feat not often achieved."

  "Uh-huh, I'm sure." Conor braced himself, a white-knuckled flyer preparing for descent as the old pro banked a turn for his final approach. "Why were you in Gosport?"

  "To see our friend, Curtis Sedgwick."

  And, ka-boom. Conor imagined Frank could gauge the precise instant when the bottom fell out of his stomach.

  "So, he's alive."

  Frank clucked and peeled a scholar's eye at him. "Well, I hadn't said so. I might have been viewing his mortal remains, after all. Your sloppy inference is correct, however. Is the news surprising, pleasing, disappointing?"

  "It's a relief," Conor replied. "I left him in a tight spot. How is he?"

  "Much the same as I remember." Frank sniffed. "Unkempt, surly, and profane."

  "He wasn't unkempt the last time I saw him." Conor pulled at his lip, struggling to articulate a question he didn't want to ask. "Did he seem . . . I mean, were you able to tell—"

  "I've no idea. I did not inquire and I don't care. He seemed lucid and reasonably healthy, for whatever that's worth, though I still find it astounding the DEA would take him on board."

  Conor nodded, wishing he felt reassured. He understood what the disastrous operation in Gulmarg had done to him, both physically and emotionally. The memories lived with him every day and he was finding a way to deal with them, but Sedgwick had a more complicated personal history, one riddled with coping mechanisms that had often brought him to brink of annihilation.

  "Why did you meet with him?" Another question he didn't want to ask.

  "His request, to compare notes," Frank explained. "Since you two last met, Sedgwick has been tracking the DEA's black-hearted traitor Tony Costino, who in turn is keen to track a certain twenty million dollars he thought had been transferred to Vasily Dragonov but instead went curiously missing. The snafu has put a strain on his relationship with Dragonov. Believing you and Thomas hold the key to a puzzle he needs to solve, he'd like to locate you. Toward this end, he's accomplished something MI6 can't seem to manage. Costino found Robert Durgan, and while the fate of your brother is apparently still a mystery Durgan hasn't penetrated, we've discovered he almost certainly knows what became of you."

  "Jesus Christ." Conor gaped at him.

  "Yes. Quite," Frank agreed drily. "Through a spectacular piece of misfortune, it appears the unidentified mole within MI6 who leaked your recruitment to Durgan last year is keeping him updated on your present location."

  "How? How could that happen? I didn't even tell you where I went."

  "Ah, well." Frank's easy manner faltered. He blushed and frowned, twirling the stem of his wineglass between his fingers.

  "Frank." Conor spoke in quiet warning. "How the fuck did your unidentified mole find out where I am?"

  Frank offered a mild shrug. "It was meant for your protection, really. At least in part. The conditions our American friends set for your green card stipulated your public records would remain unpurged and accessible to US authorities. The most I could do was have them electronically flagged to receive notice if anyone accessed them. When US Immigration and Customs Enforcement pulled your arrest record at the beginning of May, I obtained an electronic copy of the report filed by the agents detailing their visit to the Rembrandt Inn, and within hours flew to Vermont to meet with one of them. I returned home satisfied the matter was entirely innocent."

  "But it wasn't?"

  "Yes, of course it was. That wasn't the issue." Frank waved his hand. "The problem occurred at the London end. I'd no idea ICE would also express a classified hard copy of the report to me. Since I was sitting in the Burlington airport when the file arrived in my UK office, it passed to the next officer with the proper security clearances for triaging. I received a copy through internal channels weeks later. I interrogated the chap responsible, but he'd no recollection of when or how it had been cleared off his desk."

  "Someone else had their hands on my file, and you didn't think the information worth sharing. You obviously knew where to find me." Conor's toneless composure perturbed the agent at last.

  "You're offering a bravura display of your considerable skills, my boy."

  "It's that 'talent for repose' my trainers mentioned. No doubt it made a strong impression."

  "No doubt," Frank snapped, "but this façade of restraint isn't necessary with me."

  "Good, because it's nearly exhausted. Why didn't you tell me?"

  "Perhaps I should have done; yes, all right, certainly I should have done," Frank sighed. "I knew what would happen, though. The risk seemed small and for once I allowed emotion to cloud my judgment."

  "You didn't want me disappearing again," Conor accused. "You wanted me to stay pinpointed on your radar screen."

  "I wanted you to be happy," Frank countered wearily. "I looked at the website for the inn. The setting is glorious, and the entire state is like a Lake District paradise, or a slice of Irish countryside. I couldn't imagine a more perfect sanctuary for someone so in need of recuperation. I didn't want to take it from you."

  Conor held himself still, and for a while couldn't think of another thing to say. After unsteadily hitching in his breath, he got to his feet. "Right. Well, it's gone now. I'm off."

  "Not just yet, I hope." Frank smiled up at him, recovering some of his aplomb.

  Conor pulled his keys from his pocket. "For God's sake, Frank. I need to go back to the inn, collect my things and get the hell out tonight."

  The agent reached out and gave the low empty chair next to him a gentle shake. "Sit down. You act quite certain about what you need to do but your confidence is misguided, I assure you. You're not thinking clearly just now. Disappearing is not the wisest or safest plan of action, and it deviates from our strategy."

  "Deviates how? Whose strategy? What is it?" Conor telegraphed his mistrust, glaring at Frank.

  "One devised by Sedgwick and myself, of course." Entirely restored now, Frank looked maddeningly pleased with himself. "We've enhanced our inter-agency cooperation quite a bit since last year. Embarrassing fiascoes tend to produce this sort of salubrious effect. I'll be happy to share our plans with you, just as Sedgwick—presumably at this moment—is sharing them with the lovely Kate Fitzpatrick at the Rembrandt Inn. We'll want her cooperation of course, so we needed to bring her up to speed."

  Conor plummeted down to eye-level, landing on his haunches. He grabbed Frank's chair, and with his face inches from the man's carapace of impeccable silvered hair, hissed into the agent's ear.

  "What the fuck have you done, you manipulative son of a bitch?"

  14

  The drive along the curving scenic byways between Hartsboro Bend and Stowe had taken a good hour and a half when Conor—preoccupied but unhurried—made the outbound trip earlier in the day. The return took exactly fifty-eight minutes.

  He still had plenty of time to cycle through the grim scenarios he might face at journey's end, and by the time he arrived and Dominic had directed him to Kate's office his brain was thicketed with an entire network of conditional responses. All of them grew obsolete the minute Conor strode across the lobby and threw open the door. He stumbled into a scene far different from what he'd expected, and froze on the threshold.

  In front of the office couch, dripping with perspiration, Kate knelt with her arms wrapped around the limp torso of a man on the floor. Her eyes stared in alarm at the sound of Conor's entrance. She went limp with relief when she recognized him, but as he continued to stand mute and immobile, her expression ha
rdened.

  "Come in or stay out, but for God's sake close the door." She dropped her arms and sat on her heels, passing a hand over her forehead. "If anyone catches sight of him they might think he ate here."

  Conor closed the door and walked into the room until he stood directly over the man who had served as his MI6 control in Mumbai—the man who'd begun their relationship with a lie, spinning him into the web of chaos that had taken his brother's life. He wanted to despise Curtis Sedgwick, but their shared history was too complicated for such purity of emotion. Circumstance had forged a tenuous bond, strengthened by the deeper truth connecting them: they both had loved Thomas, and he had loved them.

  As though sensing the weight of his gaze Sedgwick shivered and lifted his head, displaying a weak smirk before letting his chin drop to his chest. "Welcome home, McBride. Enjoy the concert?"

  Conor had never seen him in this condition, but thought Thomas had been all-too familiar with it. His brother's antidote of tenderness and violence in equal parts had secured for the agent what he couldn't achieve alone—a lasting respite from self-destruction.

  Promise me you'll take care of yourself.

  Those were the last words Thomas delivered to Sedgwick as they settled him in the car for the drive to Srinagar, a trip they all knew would take too long. Conor turned from the agent, emotion thickening in his throat, and shifted his attention to Kate, who avoided his gaze with a tight frown.

  "He couldn't manage the stairs. I tried to get him back to the couch and we both ended up on the floor."

  "How long has he been here?"

  "I'm not sure. An hour, I guess. Long enough. He seemed sick when he got here and it's been getting worse. Whatever it is. He wouldn't tell me." She darted a reproachful glance at him. "He was more interested in talking about you than himself."

  He nodded, offering to help her up, but she twisted from his outstretched hand. "Move out of the way now," Conor said quietly.

  "He's heavier than he looks. Just get on the other side and help me."

  "I said move out of the way."

  "Yes, I heard what you said." Kate rounded on him, pinning him with an anger that darkened her eyes to violet. "Sorry to be in the way. How far would you like me to go?"

  Conor clenched his jaw. "Please, Kate."

  She held her ground for several seconds, then got to her feet with a shrug of dismissal and moved to lean against the desk. Conor put one hand under Sedgwick's arm, getting a grip on his belt with the other, and with an abrupt jerk he wrenched the agent from the floor and slammed him onto the couch. Sedgwick crumpled sideways, chortling feebly as his head came to rest against the padded arm.

  "Still quick with your hands, dude. What are we at now, three rounds to one? Not a fair fight this time, though."

  He tipped off-balance as he struggled to lift his legs. Conor gathered up a handful of his stained t-shirt and shoved him back into place. "What have you done to yourself, you selfish bastard? He only wanted one thing from you. He sat there with the life bleeding out of him and asked for one fucking promise. That was too much, was it?"

  Sedgwick stared up at him, all trace of amusement gone. In its place Conor saw a haunted grief he recognized well; he faced it in the mirror on many a morning.

  "What about you?" Sedgwick whispered. "What did he want from you?"

  Something he almost couldn't bear either, Conor thought. His anger faded at the memory of a flashlight hanging from a hook in the darkness, and of his brother's hand gripped between both of his own as the Kashmir night deepened around them.

  "To hold onto him until he was safe. I kept my promise."

  "I kept mine, too."

  "Horseshit." Conor scowled at the agent. "Look at you, shaking yourself to bits. You're coming off of something. What happened? Ran out of needles or money, or both?"

  "Try ‘neither’ you self-righteous asshole," Sedgwick snapped. "I've got malaria. The only thing I've been on is chloroquine, which apparently didn't work."

  "Malaria?" Conor squinted, unconvinced. Behind him, Kate snapped to attention.

  "Malaria! Holy shit, malaria?"

  "Relapsing malaria is more precise." Sedgwick glanced at her. "Not contagious, don't worry." He fumbled a small bottle out of his pocket and threw it at Conor in exasperation. "I bought them off a kiosk in Bangalore. The label says choloroquine but the fucking pills are either counterfeit or past the expiration date. All I can tell is, they're not working. So, unless your corner store here in East Overshoe carries anti-malarials I guess I'm in for a rocky night."

  Following a terse exchange, Kate returned to her post in the dining room and Conor retrieved a box of primaquine from his medicine cabinet. The anti-malarial drug was one among a sackful given to him upon discharge from Kings College Hospital. Most were for the regimen he'd followed every day for months, but other prophylactics had been thrown in as a precaution. His doctors had pegged him as a tropics-wandering daredevil who needed ongoing protection. After returning to Kate's office and administering the first dose, he managed to haul Sedgwick up the stairs and into a guest room without attracting notice.

  He got him into bed, and sat guard to keep the agent from falling out as he lurched in a delirium punctuated by self-recrimination—seemingly a catalogue of every weakness and every wrong he'd ever committed.

  "Will you ever leave off, already," Conor sighed. He lifted Sedgwick's head and pressed yet another glass of water to his lips. "Stupid git. Even I don't think you're as bad as that."

  When the fever broke, coherence returned. Flattened against the mattress as though ironed into it, and with lines in his face deep enough to put a finger into, the agent resembled a sculpted effigy. Conor offered no quarter for his glazed exhaustion. As soon as he saw evidence of lucidity he started the interrogation.

  "What did you tell her?"

  "Everything, pretty much. The basic facts, I mean." Sedgwick studied him, eyelids at half-mast. "Relax. I left out the gory details. I think she could have handled them, though. She's quite the piece of work. Quite the piece of something else too, isn't she? Is she a natural red—"

  "Shut the fuck up."

  "Hmm, yeah. Thought so."

  Conor ignored the remark. "What happened after Thomas and I left Gulmarg? On the path?"

  They exchanged a long look of understanding. Sedgwick was the first to grimace and glance away. "Leave it alone. I said I would take care of it, and I did."

  "But, how—"

  "Leave it alone."

  "Fine." Conor held his breath for several seconds—shamed by the thought of it escaping as a sigh of relief. "What happened back up at the resort?"

  "Frank was supposed to tell you." Sedgwick settled his head deeper into the pillow and closed his eyes.

  "He never got the chance. I left in a hurry. Wake up and give over. What happened?"

  "Bloodbath." Lips pursed, Sedgwick frowned at the ceiling. "By the time I got back up the hill the only ones still alive were two Srinagar police officers."

  "What about Greg Walker?" Conor had last seen the senior DEA agent sprinting in the direction of the gunfire as they carried Thomas away.

  "Dead. AK-47 spray. Most of his face was gone."

  "Costino?"

  "Disappeared. I tore most of the town apart looking for the double-crossing piece of shit. Eventually, I discovered he'd hiked down to Drung village and paid someone to drive him to the nearest rail station. Then he went to ground, which seemed weird at the time. He would have assumed Walker and I were both dead, because the news stories about the Gulmarg shootout reported no survivors. He probably figured you and Thomas had left the country, and anyway he had no reason to think anyone had guessed what he'd done. He'd just helped an arms dealer score twenty million and presumably earned a nice commission. Why hide? Unless he'd somehow lifted the twenty million for himself and was hiding from Dragonov. The trail went cold for months but he finally made a mistake, which is when I discovered I was only partly right. He was hiding from D
ragonov, not because he'd stolen the money but because it was missing. So, where was the twenty million? Only one explanation made any sense and it knocked me back a little."

  Conor deflected the agent's inquisitive gaze with a glare. "Is this what it's all about for you, trying to get the DEA's money back?"

  Sedgwick worked at the sheet covering his chest, gathering it into his hands and releasing a slow breath. "For God's sake, Conor. Is that what you think?"

  "I don't, no." He regretted the remark, recognizing it as a bit of opportunistic redirection. "We didn't take the feckin' money," he said flatly.

  Sedgwick raised his head, looking more alert. "Care to elaborate?"

  "Not at the moment."

  Conor got up and moved to the room's open window, which offered a view of the parking lot. A group of dinner guests stood chatting in the moonlight near their cars, reluctant to call time on a pleasant summer evening. He leaned an arm against the sill, listening to their relaxed laughter mingle with the piercing call of nighthawks, feeling like a man staring from a prison.

  "You said he made a mistake. What was it?" Getting no reply he turned and saw Sedgwick dozing off again. He returned to the bedside, giving the agent's leg a light slap, and repeated the question. Sedgwick's eyes opened more slowly this time.

  "We set up an email account at the beginning of the DEA operation to communicate with Dragonov's people. Costino and I both had access; we wrote the messages and signed them as Thomas. Obviously, Costino used a different channel once he decided to rat on us, but I still checked our original account every day. Earlier this month it paid off, but he didn't write to Dragonov's people. He sent a message to Robert Durgan, and I traced Tony’s IP address to an internet cafe in Bangalore."

  "Tony knows where Durgan is?" Conor asked sharply. Sedgwick looked dubious.

  "Not sure we can assume that much, but he knew how to reach him. Costino was the one who contacted Durgan to set up the meeting with Walker in Geneva. He got the email address from Pawan Kotwal."