The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3

by Kathryn Guare

  “It’s Chatham, actually,” Kate said. “I’ve gone back to my maiden name, but call me Kate. I’d like to introduce Conor McBride, my … fiancé.”

  Conor’s surprise registered with only a shiver along his jawline, but Guido Brottman was not so unflappable. Still gripping her hand, his thin lips parted in shock. “Fiancé? I wasn’t aware, or rather I wasn’t told … forgive me.” Collecting himself, he stepped over to extend a hand to Conor. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. McBride.”

  “Mr. Brottman.” Conor offered an amiable smile as the two shook hands, but to Kate the gesture looked like the opening move in a wrestling match. Even in the stylish lobby of one of the oldest banks in the world, ritual male instinct trumped the pull of evolution.

  “Well, yes,” said Brottman. Her announcement had clearly thrown him off his game. After an uncertain pause he appeared to reach a decision. “I’ve asked a few associates to join us, but they need a bit of time to assemble. In the meantime, shall we have coffee in my office?”

  They took the elevator one flight up and followed him down a hallway that opened into a large suite. He ushered them ahead into his office, pausing outside to speak with his assistant. The office was much like the reception area—spare design, functional but elegant. An assortment of sturdy leather couches and chairs were arranged around a glass table in front of the window. The assistant brought in coffee, serving it in a stunning German porcelain service. Brottman poured, and after several minutes of small talk he appeared to get his wind back.

  “Now I come to think of it, I do remember hearing about you, Conor. From the princess—that is, Kate’s grandmother, Sophia-Marie.”

  Conor nodded. “I had the pleasure of meeting her last fall.”

  “You originally came to do a bit of farming for Kate, yes? And I believe you play on a fiddle?”

  “That’s right, Guido.”

  Detecting the ice beneath his easygoing lilt, Kate tried to catch Conor’s eye, but he was avoiding her face.

  “I started managing Kate’s farm a little under a year ago, and yes, I do play on a fiddle.”

  “How wonderful.” Brottman sat back, rubbing the knuckle of his index finger against his lip. “And you came here originally from—?”

  “Ireland.”

  “I see, and your family are—?”

  “Dead.”

  “Oh, indeed. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. So am I.”

  Brottman seemed momentarily flustered and Kate took the opportunity to interrupt their verbal fencing match. “Conor does more than just ‘play on a fiddle.’ He’s a talented classical violinist. He’s going to be playing—”

  “It’s just a little recital.” Conor took her hand and gave it a firm squeeze. “For a local church back in Vermont. Celebration of spring and all that.”

  Brottman’s perfunctory smile warmed several degrees as he turned back to Kate. “Might I enquire as to the wedding date?”

  She felt her face growing hot. “We haven’t set a date yet.”

  “Aha. I see.”

  “No, but we’re dead keen on it, so I suppose it’ll be soon. Right, darlin’?” Placing his cup on the table, Conor got to his feet. “Your mates will be wondering what’s become of you, Guido. I’d best get out of here so you can get down to business.”

  The banker’s features softened in relief, and Kate leapt to her feet. “Wait. Where are you going?”

  “I’ve a few errands to run,” Conor said, still addressing Brottman. “How long do you expect you’ll need?”

  “I think ninety minutes at most. It was good meeting you.”

  “Likewise,” said Conor, shaking Brottman’s proffered hand.

  Kate grabbed Conor’s arm. “Dammit, wait a minute.”

  He leaned in to kiss her and hissed against her ear. “Kate, for God’s sake. Don’t. Please. And say nothing about Prague.” He stepped back and touched a finger to her cheek. “I’ll meet you in the plaza outside. Okay?”

  Unnerved by the anger in Conor’s eyes, Kate nodded, and before she could say another word he was gone.

  He tried to think of something to keep himself busy for ninety minutes, something besides pummeling the smug, boxy face of Guido Brottman. Walking seemed the best option to cool off his steaming anger, so Conor set off across town in no particular direction, adopting the urban quick-step of the pedestrians crowded around him.

  At first, he was equally furious with Kate. This was her world—her “circle” as she’d called it. She might disdain its shallow materialism but she was still more comfortable in it than he was. She knew how it operated, yet she’d thoughtlessly subjected him to an Armani-wearing bean counter who regarded him as some dodgy immigrant gigolo.

  After covering several blocks, Conor calmed down enough to recognize his anger was misplaced. Kate wanted to involve him in her life. It wasn’t her fault the details of it were so bloody outlandish, and on that score he had no right to complain. He lived in a glass house himself.

  She’d wanted him there for moral support, but Brottman clearly had no intention of including him in a discussion of Kate’s finances, and he couldn’t entirely fault the advisor’s motives. He was protecting the interests of his client, and Kate was indeed vulnerable. No one had prepared her for dealing with wealth at this level. Conor knew she felt overwhelmed; he just wasn’t sure ninety minutes in a room full of Zimmer House gits was likely to help much.

  The last of his irritation vanished when, without planning on it, his walk brought him to the vast, enclosed footprint of 9/11’s Ground Zero. He spent twenty minutes walking its borders, shocked by the scale of it.

  Watching from an ocean away, he’d had no concept of the sheer size of the World Trade Center, or of the vacuum created when it was gone. That afternoon in September he’d driven into Dingle to buy a pair of boots and had been getting into his truck when a tourist flew out of Murphy’s, roaring that America was under attack. Conor had piled into the pub with everyone else and gathered around a television someone had brought in from the back. When the first tower went down it was like the air had been sucked from the room. If their own town had burned to the ground, the horror could not have been greater. No Irishman in the bar that day had ever been to New York, but all of them knew someone there.

  Thinking now about friends who had emigrated, Conor wondered if his roommate from the Dublin Conservatory still lived in the city. That thought prompted another, about a memorial he’d heard of a few years ago. He made several inquiries and took a few wrong turns, but eventually he found himself at the end of Vesey Street, facing the memorial to Ireland’s famine—An Gorta Mór, as it was called where he grew up. The “Great Hunger” had hollowed out the country’s soul along with its population, and even now it lingered in the Irish psyche.

  The memorial was a huge sloping plinth that replicated an Irish hillside. It jutted up and out towards the Hudson River, and stretching the length of its surface was a grassy field scattered with rocks. Its focal point was a roofless stone ruin—a “famine cottage”—with a mass of brambles creeping over its crumbling walls. It had a breathtaking authenticity, and its symbolism was poignant—a field gone fallow, a generation lost.

  Along with a few other tourists Conor entered at the back through a corridor, which passed under the plinth and led into the roofless cottage, then on to a path winding up through the pasture. It was lined on one side by a dry stone wall and on the other by the field of rocks, each named for one of Ireland’s counties. Near the top he found the one for Kerry and crouched next to it, then looked back over the tableau below him. He was astonished by a talent which could so capture the wild, forlorn beauty of his world, the one he knew better than any other, a place where he’d been known and understood. He raised his eyes from the small patch to its incongruous surroundings. The office buildings and hotels, the yellow cabs and honking delivery trucks, and—irony of ironies—the yeasty aroma of baking bread. There was a bakery on the side street next to the memoria
l.

  In a mood more subdued than when he’d started Conor returned to Maiden Lane. Kate wasn’t in sight, so he wandered into an upscale grocery store at the corner of the plaza, one floor below street level. It seemed to go on forever with buffets, sushi bars and delis sprinkled among endless shelves of high-end dry goods. After circling it once he’d had enough. He saw Kate waiting above as he climbed the stairs and gave her a wistful smile once he’d reached the top.

  “Was that any way to propose to a man?”

  Kate closed her eyes as if in pain. “Conor, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think about how he’d react. It was just the first thing that popped out of my mouth.” She opened her eyes again, looking nervous. “That wasn’t—I mean, I wasn’t really—”

  “I know. Relax.” Conor drew her aside, away from the people streaming in to pay more for a bento box than some people spent on a week’s worth of bag lunches. “He seemed to take against me awfully fast. Is Brottman in love with you?”

  “I’ve never met him before!” Kate protested.

  Conor nodded. “He’s had a long relationship with your money though. I expect he’s in love with that. I wish you’d stuck with the ‘hired man’ suggestion. He’s bound to start looking for dirt on me, and we know what he’ll find.”

  “Oh God—your arrest record!” She slumped against him. “Why don’t I ever see these things coming?”

  “Because you’re kind and straightforward, and you think the best of people. Never mind about it. He can only get at the public records, and those are flagged. Frank will take care of it.”

  Conor spoke as if it meant little to him, but while it was true Frank would intercept anyone displaying unusual curiosity about him, it rankled that the arrest record—for a crime he hadn’t committed—would plague him for the rest of his life. Anyone could dig it up and think they’d learned something about him.

  Kate was still berating herself. “I always seem to cause you trouble. I don’t know why you’d want to be my fiancé anyway.”

  “Because you’re kind and straightforward, and you think the best of people. Did you think it was only the great sex?” Conor bumped her shoulder with his own, making her smile at last. “So, how was the meeting after all that? What went on?”

  “I have no clue. There were seven of them—all men. I know they were speaking English, but it was like a weird sports lingo. ‘Auto switches’ and ‘swap spreads.’ It felt like I was in a locker room.” She shuddered. “I don’t want to think about it anymore right now. Maybe Oma can help me understand it. Do you want to get some lunch?”

  He looked back down at the hall of food. “Believe it or not I don’t feel like eating, but if you’re hungry, this store has a cafe—maybe two or three of them.”

  Following his gaze, Kate pursed her lips in distaste. “No, I don’t want to go in there.” She turned back to him and laid a hand against his face. “Are you all right? You have that ‘astral traveling’ look in your eyes.”

  “Do I? Well, it’s been a funny old morning, but I’m okay. How about you?”

  “Better now. Do you want to take a walk? I can show you the city.”

  “Yeah, let’s do that.”

  Conor took her hand and looped it around his arm, feeling the relief of connecting with something familiar. Of coming home.

  4

  Another skyscraper, another chilly reception area, and now another oil painting.

  As instructed, they’d arrived at the British Consulate at three o’clock, but as soon as Kate had signed the visitor’s log and offered up her Chamber of Commerce credentials, a pin-striped intern sitting next to the receptionist popped to his feet and walked them out the door again. The meeting location had been changed, he explained. It would now take place at the residence of the British consul general a few blocks away.

  Chatting all the while about his love for skiing and admiration for Vermont, he escorted them through the midtown traffic to the Beekman Regent apartment building. They passed through a marble-floored lobby and took the elevator up to a penthouse residence, where the young man ushered them into a conference room and departed without further explanation.

  The room, long and narrow, smelled of furniture polish, and its atmosphere was muted by plush carpeting. The walls were painted a deep cardinal red and lined with artwork, the largest identified as a portrait of King William III, dressed for battle. Centered above the conference table, the monarch presided over the room like a board chairman, eyes fixed on the doorway, military baton resting lightly in his hands.

  After pausing at a window to look at the view Conor joined Kate in front of the painting. “William of Orange. That figures.” Seeing her questioning look he added, “King Billy wasn’t universally loved in Ireland.”

  “Oh dear. Have I given offense before we’ve even started?”

  The voice behind them, high, reedy, and unnaturally loud in the otherwise hushed apartment, made Kate jump like a burglar caught in the act. Conor grabbed her elbow to prevent her lurching against an antique side table and they turned to face a pudgy figure not much more than five feet tall, who stood in the doorway holding a tea tray.

  “If you’re that sort of Irishman, perhaps I should have draped a cloth over it.” He came into the room and set the tray on the table. Then with hands clasped behind his back he peered at Conor through round, wire-rimmed glasses. “Are you that sort of Irishman?”

  “Not really,” Conor admitted, amused by his earnest curiosity. “I do love a good rebel song though.”

  “Indeed. A man steeped in music after all.” He turned his attention to Kate, who was gaping in open astonishment.

  “Are you Reginald Effingham?”

  Looking pleased, he briefly rocked up onto his toes. “Ah, I expect you recognized my voice? Just so. ‘Reg’ will do nicely for me, and it’s Ms. Chatham now, I believe? What a treat to meet you in person. Our first conversation was terribly strained, I’m afraid. I do hope you’ll forgive me. I’m not sure your friend Abigail ever will.”

  Kate appeared too stunned to speak and his smile faded to a worried frown. “Sorry, were you expecting someone else?”

  “We weren’t told who to expect,” Conor replied for her.

  While the statement was accurate, in truth Reginald Effingham was exactly who they’d expected, but not looking like this. Kate had been introduced to the MI6 staff officer by phone six months earlier. He’d been at the inn, sweeping the property in search of listening devices while she was at a New Hampshire medical center waiting for news about Conor, who’d arrived bleeding from a gunshot wound and sizzling with fever. It had been a hectic night. From Kate’s description, Conor got the impression the call had indeed been strained, and that Effingham’s encounter with Abigail had fallen just short of violence.

  With other priorities to tackle they’d never questioned Abigail about the man’s physical appearance, but during the drive that morning Kate had offered her vision of a willowy, towheaded sycophant in his early twenties, puffed with an attitude of self-importance. “Puffed” seemed to be the one feature she’d nailed, Conor thought, watching the portly little man shift a plate of cake and biscuits onto the table.

  “Milk. I’ve forgotten it.” Effingham headed back through the doorway. “Back in a jiff. Do help yourselves to the biscuits.”

  Conor popped one into his mouth, grinning at Kate. “I hate to be the one telling you, but you are not magnificent at profiling. We should work on your poker face as well. You’re about as opaque as a spit-shone window pane.”

  “His voice sounded so much younger on the phone,” Kate whispered. “He must be at least fifty, and he looks like Alfred Hitchcock!”

  “Younger version, maybe. He’s got a bit more hair.”

  She clapped a hand to her mouth, muffling a burst of laughter, but recovered by the time their host returned. Effingham took a seat at the head of the table with Kate and Conor on either side of him.

  “Apologies for changing the location of
our meeting today,” he said, after tea had been poured and cake distributed. “The consul general is out of town, but he’s hosting a back-channel meeting here tomorrow evening. The TSCM team finished earlier today, so I thought why not get the benefit of their work?”

  “What’s TSCM?” Kate asked.

  “Technical Surveillance Counter Measures—a joint effort with the Americans, so no expense spared. This is possibly the cleanest, most private room in all New York at the minute.”

  “Are there ordinarily a lot of bugs planted around the city?”

  “Oh, quite.” Effingham warbled a high-pitched laugh. “They spring up like mold, especially in the consulates and around the UN. Most of it’s rubbish that doesn’t even work—gimcracks from developing world networks—but we scrub them out anyway.”

  With a faraway smile he stared down at his teacup, as though recalling TSCM adventures not suitable for sharing, and then gave the table a light slap. “Well, to business, shall we? I’ve information and other treasures to dole out for the first leg that will deliver you safely into Frank’s hands. You’ll spend the first few nights at his home in Windsor, did he mention that?”

  Conor was surprised by the news. He’d assumed they’d be staying either in London or Portsmouth, near Fort Monckton. “I haven’t talked with Frank since Christmas, and as you’re no doubt aware he’s skimpy with information. I’m hoping you’ll shed some light on this whole business. What’s the agenda, and what can you tell us about the assignment?”

  Effingham sighed. “As to the first question, there’s not much light to shed. Ms. Chatham, you’ll go from Windsor to Fort Monckton for three weeks of operational training, and I’m afraid that’s something of a black hole. They play it all quite close to their chests down there. You’re prepared for the odd surprise, I hope?”

  Kate smiled. “I think so. Conor has given me hints about what to expect.”