Kate made a strangled sound, more sob than laugh. “It’s a good thing nobody knows we once were the Alders.”
They reflected on that, and then looked at each other.
“Oh, Christ.” Conor fumbled with the doorknob as she popped the trunk.
They met each other at the rear of the car, which was peppered with bullet holes. Kate shivered and looked away.
“You’ll have to. I can’t.”
He raised the hood slowly. Kate darted a quick glance, and then a longer one. At first, the trunk looked empty, but as the hood rose higher she saw the small figure wedged into a tiny pocket of space at the very back of the trunk. Conor reached in and gently took hold of the crumpled sports jacket.
“Winnie?”
At the sound of his name, the little man rolled out of his hiding place like a hedgehog and landed in front of them.
“Fucking hell,” he moaned, white-faced. “I’ll sign whatever you like. You can even have me first-born. Just get me out of here.”
Conor dropped his head and leaned on the lip of the trunk in relief. Behind her, Kate heard the scrape of a foot against the gravel and turned.
“Who is he?” Ghorbani asked.
13
It would have been inhuman to leave him in the trunk, so when they returned to the highway Winnie rode in the front seat while Conor sat in the back with Ghorbani, who immediately began firing questions. To keep him from hearing more than was good for him Kate tried distracting their docile prisoner by turning up the radio, which meant she couldn’t hear anything either, but it was obvious when the message hit its mark. The agent erupted in a torrent of Persian—obscenities, she presumed—and repeatedly slammed his fist against the door next to him. Kate feared for their safety as the Iranian continued to roar, and was surprised but grateful when he rather abruptly burst into tears. It was hard to listen to, but better than his murderous rage.
Next to her, Winnie—eyes locked on the road, face frozen into a rictus of alarm—appeared to share her opinion. He gradually relaxed, shaking his head and wiping his palms against his legs. She gave what she hoped looked like a comforting smile, and turned off the radio. It hadn’t been helping anyway.
“He’s passed out,” Conor said after an extended silence.
“Lucky him. I wish I could.” Kate mentally kicked herself for the remark. She could predict his reaction, and he instantly proved her right.
“Why don’t I take over the driving? You must be exhausted.”
“I’m not really. It was just something to say. Anyway, I don’t want to sit back there, and Winnie is sleeping now too. We shouldn’t wake the poor guy.” She looked at Conor in the rearview mirror. His face was hidden in the shadows and his voice—already waning at the beginning of this escapade—had become so fractured she could barely hear him. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay.” He said it too quickly to be convincing but redirected her before she could follow up. “I suppose you might call it karma. He betrayed his country. Maybe it’s only fair for him to get the taste of it in his own mouth. Must be pretty bitter, finding out the woman you’re having an affair with just informed on you.”
“Aha. So that’s why he was crying so hard.”
Ghorbani’s dramatic reaction made more sense to her now. Kate bumped up the heat to clear a patch of condensation from the windshield. The highway was cutting through some of the farmland she’d seen from the air as they’d landed in Prague, and they were surrounded by open fields as far as she could see, which wasn’t very far. The night had grown even darker under gathering cloud cover.
“It sounds like he really loved her,” she said.
“Seems like it,” Conor agreed. “He’s gutted.”
“I feel sorry for him.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Even in the dark of night, the drive was scenic. After leaving the highway, their route matched the course of the Elbe River, winding through small, sleeping villages and a few larger towns, always with the water flowing next to them, first on their right, and then for the last leg of the journey on their left. The final ten miles passed along the edge of a forest with little to see on either side of the road, so when their destination appeared Kate nearly shot past the intersection before realizing they’d arrived.
The village of Hřensko was as charming as Reg Effingham had promised. It was perched at the mouth of a wide dramatic gorge that had two dome-shaped cliffs standing on either side of its entrance. The hulking shapes loomed over the town center like monolithic sentinels.
Connecting to the main route at a right angle, a secondary road wound farther into the gorge. It was lined with quaint, half-timbered buildings, and had a deep, stone-sided canal down the middle that carried a tributary from some interior source to its confluence with the Elbe. The Hotel Labe was the tallest of the half-timbered structures, but extremely narrow. It nestled under the immense overhanging cliff on the left side of the road, so close it looked as though the rest of its width might have been sucked into the rock. Kate hoped they wouldn’t be given a room in the back.
She drove to a parking area down the road and backed the bullet-scarred BMW into a shallow alcove of the cliff face. They stripped out anything that might point back to them, and then Conor and Ghorbani, working together from front to back, carefully wiped it clean of fingerprints.
“Please God a boulder will fall on it,” Conor said as they walked back to the hotel. He looked at their two companions and grinned at Kate. “An Iranian, a Brit, an American beauty in an evening dress, and a Paddy wearing a filthy tuxedo. I hope they get the joke.”
The hotel’s night manager was not amused, but accepted the explanation for their lack of luggage (car trouble while returning from a wedding) with an apathetic wave. Any dispute about sleeping arrangements was preempted by the news that only two rooms were available. Conor signed them in, and after tossing a room key at Ghorbani he took Kate’s hand.
“Keep an eye on our friend,” he told him, already leading her away.
“Don’t you think Winnie will try to run?” Kate asked when they reached their room.
“Run where, now?” Conor inserted the key in the lock. “Up the gorge? Did you not see the look on his face? The poor little shite is terrified. If he’s missing in the morning I expect we’ll find him under the bed.”
They entered the room, which was outdated and smelled strongly of the floral-scented air freshener on the dresser, but it was clean and spacious. Conor sat on the bed and started to sigh, but then grimaced and swore under his breath. After helping him remove the dress shirt, Kate carefully lifted up his t-shirt to see what kind of damage a curbstone could do.
“Oh, Conor.” She stared, horrified. His entire left side looked like a dark and particularly brutal sky in a Turner landscape. “Sweetheart, I had no idea. We need to get you to a hospital and get it x-rayed.”
“Wouldn’t be any use. I don’t think anything’s broken, so they couldn’t do much.”
“But you can’t be sure, and they could give you something for the pain. You must be in agony.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but I’m thinking an ice pack wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
Glad to do something useful, Kate once more gathered up the hazardous folds of her gown and grabbed the ice bucket, sprinting from the room. Along with the ice and a liter of mineral water, she managed to pry a bottle of pain relievers out of the surly night manager. When she returned, Conor was standing bare-chested in front of the bathroom mirror with a folded hand towel between his teeth, his face running with sweat as he methodically probed each rib. Kate couldn’t bear to watch. She sat in a chair with her face in her hands until he finally came out and stood in front of her, shaken but relieved.
“Like I said. Nothing broken.” He tried to smile and nodded at the bottle in her hands. “Is that paracetamol? Brilliant. I’ll have them all, please.”
During the intermittent ice applications Kate asked for more details about his
conversation with Ghorbani, hoping to distract him from the pain and satisfy her own curiosity.
“Did you tell him Greta was the one who contacted us?”
“God, no,” Conor said. “I told him we just got word from London that he was blown and in trouble. He worked out on his own who’d done it. He kept asking me what she’d said about him, and I had to keep saying I’d no idea who she was. I can’t tell if he knows I’m lying or thinks me a first-class eejit.”
When they at last fell into bed an hour later Kate moved away to the edge, but Conor gave her arm a tug.
“Sure all we need is you cracking your head on the nightstand. Come over here.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.
“You won’t, if you stay this side of me.”
They lay together, listening to the sounds outside the window. Kate had propped it open, hoping to dispel some of the air freshener fumes. She could hear the water streaming through the canal below them. It reminded her of the brook next to the inn, which made her think about all the people she missed, which made her ache to be home. Conor’s mind was moving along a different track.
“That was the most amazing piece of driving I’ve ever seen.”
“Why thank you.” Kate raised her head to give him a kiss.
“I wonder why no one ever bothered to give me a course in evasive driving.”
“It wasn’t included in your training?”
“Nope.” He pouted. “Eleven weeks I was there. Never had my hands on the wheel of a car. Not once.”
“Huh.” Kate ran a finger along his stubbled jaw. “Have I injured your tender male ego?”
“Are you joking? I was never so turned on in my life. It’s a crime I’m too sore to do anything about it.”
“I’ll take a rain check.”
She lay back, watching his profile. The last thing she saw before drifting to sleep was the flash of his smile in the dark.
When she woke several hours later Kate was alone, which was nothing new. She considered herself an early riser, but since Conor rarely stayed in bed past five o’clock she was never up before him. It stung a bit that he hadn’t waited for her, but if he was motivated by a search for food it was probably a good sign.
A hot shower restored her spirits, but they deflated again as she considered her wardrobe options—or more accurately, her lack of options. It took a while, but she shook herself and the evening gown into respectable condition, and without a glance at the mirror descended to the lobby.
She wondered if their traveling companions were still asleep, or whether one had run away or been strangled by the other. At this point, nothing would surprise her. Her curiosity was partly satisfied when she peeked into the dining room and saw Conor and Winnie, sitting across from each other at one of the tables. Of course, they were as far away as they could possibly be, and naturally the dining room was crowded. Kate squared her shoulders and began the long walk over to them.
Conor looked up, eyes widening as he caught sight of her. He got up to hold a chair, and once she was seated, discreetly put his lips to her temple.
“Only you could pull that off.”
“I look ridiculous.”
“That’s not the word I would have used.”
“Bloody gorgeous,” Winnie chimed in, gazing at her. “No disrespect intended,” he added, seeing Conor’s raised eyebrow.
“Easy there, tiger.” Conor’s movements were a little stiff as he sat down, but he looked remarkably rested for what little sleep he must have had, and his voice had returned to its usual husky pitch. He was like a quick-charging battery, Kate thought. Plug him in for a few hours and he was ready to go. She was happy to see him feeling better, but envious of his resilience. She felt like a foam-stuffed pillow, only less animated.
“I need coffee,” she said. “Quarts of it.”
“Allow me.” Winnie hopped up and trotted across the room to the buffet and coffee station. Conor watched him go, looking thoughtful.
“Winston O’Shea. A widower, he tells me. He was a waiter at Rules in Covent Garden, and after twelve years of service they made him redundant. He got a job as a fraud investigator for an insurance firm and then a year ago started his own business. He’s rethinking that now.” Conor looked back at her with a bemused shrug. “I’m beginning to like the guy. I’m also thinking he’s not our biggest worry.”
“Ghorbani?” Kate asked. “Where is he?”
“Back in the bar, drinking away his grief. He may chuck himself in the Elbe before this fellow Marshall shows up from Dresden.”
“Which won’t be until late this evening, because we weren’t supposed to get here until after midnight. Are we going to babysit him until then?”
“We can’t,” he said. “I’ve a rehearsal that I’ve no intention of missing, and the Labuts are expecting us to move in with them today.”
Kate covered her eyes. “Oh, God. I’d forgotten about them. What are we going to do?”
“Strike a bargain.” After a glance across the room, Conor leaned over and lifted Winnie’s sports jacket from the back of his chair. He pulled a passport from the inside pocket, hiding it in one hand under the table.
“What kind of bargain?” Kate asked as he quickly put the jacket back. Conor didn’t answer, and before she could ask again, she felt the light tap of his foot against her shin.
“Look at this.” He winked at her. “You’re getting the royal treatment.”
Winnie appeared at her elbow holding a coffee carafe and a large plate of fruit with a dish of yogurt in the middle.
“Thought you might enjoy a bit of fruit,” he said, pouring coffee for her. “The eggs is swimming in grease and the sausage don’t bear considering.”
“He’s right,” Conor agreed. “Even I couldn’t eat the sausage.”
“Thank you, Winnie,” Kate said. She wrapped both hands around the mug and breathed in the roasted aroma of the coffee, hoping an assault on all senses would accelerate its effect.
He took his seat, blushing at her smile of gratitude, but at the sight of his passport in Conor’s hand Winnie fell back against his chair as though punched, his shoulders slumped in defeat. Feeling suddenly protective of the little man, Kate frowned at Conor and he rolled his eyes.
“Ah, get away, the pair of you.” He put the passport on the table. “Hear me out, because it’s the best I can do and it might work out for everyone.”
Once explained, Kate admitted his proposition, though risky, was a generous one and probably the only practical solution to their dilemma. They could have tied Winnie up in his room for the agent from Dresden to deal with when he arrived. This would require cooperation and vigilance from Ghorbani, who couldn’t be depended upon for either. Instead, Conor proposed putting their onetime captive in charge of the Iranian.
“I’m not saying stand guard over him,” Conor explained, keeping his voice low. Although still full of guests, the room wasn’t noisy enough to mask a conversation at normal volume. “He knows what he’s here for—he was the one who asked for it. Just keep him company and make sure he doesn’t wander off to the woods or fall in the river. He’ll be good and sozzled before midnight, so roll him back into his room and put a little something in his nightcap to help him sleep. I’ll leave a coded message at the front desk for Marshall so he’ll know where to find him, then you can get a train back to Prague in the morning. I’ll give you an address where you can find us to pick up your passport and the score will be settled. No processing through MI6, no confiscating your first-born.”
Leaving this as the last word, Conor dug into the bread basket next to him and started on a croissant—a demonstration of confidence Kate knew he didn’t feel, any more than she did. It was a lot to ask, and they were asking it of someone who sat at the low end of the chutzpah scale.
A young woman came to clear away their dirty dishes. Once she’d moved on Conor shot Kate a furtive glance, which she interpreted as an order to say something.
; “Yes, I think it sounds like a good plan.” She gave a decisive nod. “What do you think, Winnie?”
Looking pensive, nervous, and hopeful all at the same time, he scratched a finger over the top of his head. “And after I put him to bed? It’s no good staying in the room with him, is it? I’ve got no proper explanation for what I’m doing there. Where do I kip for the night?”
“You could have the room we slept in last night,” Kate said, turning to Conor. “Couldn’t he?”
“He could.” Conor looked doubtful. “To be honest mate, if I were you I’d sleep in the train station. He may not have a lot of credibility, but we can’t predict what Ghorbani will say. You might not want to be ‘kipping’ down the hall when he’s telling Marshall about the drinking buddy he first saw climbing out of the boot of our car.”
“Crikey.” Winnie stared down at his hands for a long moment and then seemed to pull himself together. “All right then. When do I start?”
“Right now,” Conor said. “Go check on him in the bar. He’s not had a feckin’ thing to eat this morning so he’s likely half cut already.”
They watched him shuffle from the room, head bowed as though performing a slow march to his execution. Conor released a cautious sigh.
“Can we trust him?” Kate asked.
“Oh I think so, yeah. His father was a Kerry man. From Killorglin.” He laughed at her withering skepticism. “Seriously, who the hell knows? We’ll draw a line through it, hope for the best, and move on to the next item.”
“Of course. The next item.” She took a sip of coffee and glared into her cup. “When we first got into this, delivering Ghorbani was the entire mission—‘done and dusted’ Reg told us. It was supposed to be simple, but now for our next trick—we’ll move in with the Minister of Culture to protect him against a threat he knows nothing about, and we’re supposed to provide cover for Greta while she fakes an assassination attempt on him. We have no idea how to do that or what she’s planning.”
The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3 Page 77