The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3

by Kathryn Guare

  Kate was sitting on a sofa in one corner, awake and waiting for him. “Where have you been all this time?” she asked.

  “His study.” Conor sat down heavily on a wooden bench at the foot of the bed. “They’re swingers. Fucking vampire sex fiend swingers, and they want to swing with us. Orgies and … like that.”

  Her mouth dropped open and remained that way for a good ten seconds before she spoke again. “What did you say?”

  “Acted dumb—the thickest plonker he’s ever met. It didn’t fool him, but I think he got the message we won’t be playing, so let’s leave it at that.”

  He had no appetite for deconstructing the past half-hour. The conversation, the Becherovka and now this bloody soulless room had left him short-tempered. He moved on to give her a no-frills summary of the earlier events of the day—Winnie’s failure, Ghorbani’s disappearance, and his conversation with Frank—all of which did nothing to improve his mood.

  “What will we do with Winnie when he gets here?” Kate asked.

  “Give him his passport and send him home. Frank doesn’t seem worried about him so neither am I.”

  She asked a few more questions, and finally bristled at his curt, monosyllabic answers. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make me beg for every detail.”

  “Well it’s no use begging for them, because I haven’t many to give.” Conor kicked off his shoes, one of which sailed far enough to thump against the opposite wall.

  “Why are you so irritable all of a sudden?”

  “Jesus, Kate, I don’t know. Maybe because I’m after putting a bullet through a guy’s forehead while the one I’d thrown in the boot was nearly shot full of holes. Or it could be I’m still a bit sore from popping myself in the ribs. Or maybe I’m reflecting on the fact I’ve bolloxed the defection of a high-level Iranian asset.”

  Instead of laying into him with the anger she had every right to, she sat quietly and didn’t say a word.

  “Or maybe I’m just being a miserable shit. Sorry.” Conor rubbed at the back of his neck, thinking it an apt description: he did feel miserable and shitty.

  Kate got up and went into the bathroom, returning with a small glass bottle. She climbed on the bed and settled down behind him, carefully lifting off his shirt. He heard her rubbing her hands together, and by the time she pressed them to the knotted muscles in his neck they were warm and soft. It felt so good he nearly wept.

  “What is that?” he asked, detecting the peppery scent of sandalwood.

  “Massage oil. I found it in the bathroom.”

  “Of course you did. So, what about Sonia, then? What’s her story?”

  “She’s been living with them for a little over a year,” Kate said. “The story is that Martin ‘discovered’ her at a student recital at the University of West Bohemia in Plzeň and brought her back to Prague. Petra said he wanted to help promote her career.”

  Conor snorted. “I’ll bet.”

  “Hmm.” Kate moved her hands down to his shoulders. “She’s got a six-month-old baby. A little boy.”

  He twisted around to look at her. “His?”

  “Apparently. Petra seems oddly philosophical about it, and she adores the baby. His name is Leo. They built a nursery for him inside the master suite down the hall. Oh, and Petra’s got a lover as well. He’s a member of the Castle Guard.”

  “Mother of God, and here’s us, stuck in the middle of it for the next week.” It felt like an eternity, given the level of activity they’d experienced in just three days. Conor sighed. “And here’s me. What am I like? I volunteered us for this tower of shite.”

  Kate leaned forward and put her lips to his ear. “It’s absolutely straightforward.”

  At this pitch-perfect imitation of Reg Effingham’s plummy drawl, Conor burst out laughing.

  “Little more than the work of an evening,” she continued, her voice trembling with suppressed mirth.

  “Stop.” Still laughing, he pressed a hand to his aching side. “Ouch, ouch. Fuck.”

  “Ouch, ouch, fuck? Are you that sort of Irishman?”

  Her bubbling, infectious giggle set him off again, and the harder he laughed, the less it hurt.

  15

  Conor shot up from his pillow with the scream still in his ears. Next to him, Kate was awake as well, her face white against the darkness.

  “That wasn’t me, was it?” He already knew it couldn’t have been; his eyes were too clear. For him, nightmares didn’t blink out like a television screen upon waking. They lingered like after-images—as though his retinas were saturated with them.

  “No, that definitely wasn’t you.” She had the sheet clutched at her throat.

  Hearing the soft thump of bare feet running down the hallway, Conor threw aside the covers and reached for the Walther stowed under his clothes on the floor. He didn’t blame Kate for not wanting a loaded gun in bed with her, but unlike the hotel, the Labuts’ guest room had no handy bedside drawer and he’d been too tired to come up with a better hiding place.

  “Stay here,” he whispered, buttoning his jeans as he moved to the door, but Kate had already pulled on some clothes and was at his side. Conor looked at her, exasperated. “We had an agreement you’d do what I say in these situations.”

  “Only in a crisis,” she insisted. “This is a gray area.”

  “A gray area? It’s two in the morning and I’ve a gun in my hand, so I’d say—” He stopped at the distant sound of something like a shelf of glassware hitting the floor. Kate flinched but stood firm, urging him forward.

  “At least stay behind me.”

  “That I can do,” she said.

  Noiselessly, he turned the knob and passed through the doorway. He stepped carefully on the bare wooden floor, but it still sent up a crack that resonated down the hall. Conor back-pedaled into the bedroom, swearing softly.

  “Echoes like a bleedin’ football stadium. Would it kill them to throw down a few rugs?”

  They stood inside the door, Kate gripping a handful of the back of his t-shirt while he listened. Hearing nothing, he tried again, this time more successfully, and she followed carefully in his steps. They moved in silence down the hall past a second door on the left—Sonia’s room, he assumed—and then farther down past another on the right. This they could easily verify as the master suite because the door stood half open.

  The room was lit by a pair of small ceramic table lamps on either side of a plump, cushiony sofa. It sat in the middle of the room with matching chairs around it, all of them more or less facing a flat screen mounted on the wall. There was a small bar in the corner next to it. The windows facing the square were covered with silk drapes in a dense purple-black that shimmered like the surface of a deep lake. In contrast to the rest of the house, this room exuded the profound hush of something smothered.

  Peering through the crack on the hinged side of the door, he could see the king-sized bed at the opposite end of the room. The state of the bedcovers—in a style matching the drapes—showed it had recently been occupied, but the room was empty.

  “Should we check the bathroom?” Kate whispered.

  He shook his head. Unless absolutely necessary, Conor hoped never to cross the threshold of the Labuts’ pleasure palace. He could hear the hollow sound of voices floating up the stairwell and began to feel confident the household was not being burgled or terrorized by white nationalists.

  They started down the stairs and by the time they reached the second floor the voices had become louder and his hunch confirmed. Stepping into the foyer, Conor peeked around the doorway and lowered his gun, suddenly feeling foolish that he’d drawn on all his specialized skills to creep up on a couple in the midst of a domestic dispute.

  “They must be in the kitchen,” he said. “If they were in one of these rooms we’d hear them more clearly.”

  “I can hear them clearly enough. I’m just glad I can’t understand them.” Behind him, Kate sounded relieved and sad. She put her hands on his hips, resting her
forehead between his shoulder blades.

  The Labuts were arguing in Czech, if such a ferocious, hostile-sounding exchange could even be called an argument. The language was impenetrable, but the words were irrelevant. It was a vicious battle, its participants equally supplied with an arsenal of malice that needed no translation.

  Conor stood transfixed with his arms slightly raised, half-consciously shielding Kate from a venom boiling too close to them. He finally shuddered and turned to face her.

  “My mother was a great believer in holy water. She’d douse us every time it thundered, and I used to tease her about it. If I had some right now, I’d pour the bottle over both of us.”

  Kate took his hand. “Let’s go to bed.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll be able to stand this. What about you?”

  “I don’t know.” She pulled him towards the stairs. “Let’s see how we feel in the morning.”

  On the third floor, the hallway was darker than it had been earlier. The door to the master suite was now closed.

  “Maybe the wind blew it shut,” Kate suggested.

  “Maybe.” Conor didn’t pause to ask “what wind?” or consider other possibilities, but as soon as they’d passed it the door swung open and a figure stepped into the hall.

  Conor pivoted, his hand flying back to where the Walther was tucked beneath his waistband, but he relaxed and left the gun where it was as the figure—a woman—leaned against the doorjamb and crossed her arms.

  “I take it you didn’t interrupt.” Her soft, accented voice sounded amused. “That was wise. It’s like a drug to them, punishing each other, and you know it can be dangerous to come between an addict and his fix.”

  She was a small woman, thin as a wraith. In the light coming from the bedroom Conor could see her skin was translucently pale, and there was a lot of it to see since she was wearing a black negligee and nothing else. In spite of this, the woman’s most arresting feature was her hair. Long bangs swept low over her forehead to obscure one eye, but it appeared to be cut short at the back, and it was silver—not a naturally graying, old-lady silver, but an eye-popping, polished chrome, glow-in-the-dark sort of silver. Against this backdrop of white, black and metallic, her lips glistened, drenched in candy-apple red lipstick.

  “I’m guessing you must be Sonia,” he said.

  She bowed her head and flicked the drooping strand of hair from her eye. “And I think you must be Conor and Kate. Sorry to have missed your welcome dinner.”

  “No bother.” Conor cleared his throat, and stopped there. It seemed ridiculous to offer introductory platitudes as though they were meeting at a cocktail party. The woman was standing half-naked in front of them and he didn’t know where to look. Next to him, Kate had gone as rigid as a wooden soldier, and just as silent.

  Sonia’s eyes traveled over him. “I’m looking forward to playing with you.” After a pause, she added, “Would you like to come in for a drink?”

  “Ehm, no. Thanks very much, but I think we’re off to bed.” Conor looked at Kate. “Right?”

  “Right,” she said mechanically, still staring at Sonia. “Thank you. We’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Of course.” Sonia’s lip curled into a faint smile, her eyes sparkling with laughter.

  Kate turned on her heel and headed down the hall. Conor followed, but they both stopped short as Sonia called after them.

  “It will end with sex, you know. It always does for them.”

  “Is that what you’re waiting for?” Conor said quietly.

  She laughed. “I’m here for many reasons. Aren’t you?”

  With this cryptic remark she disappeared back into the master suite. Kate yanked on Conor’s arm, pulling him towards their room. She gave him a shove through the doorway, and after staggering through, he turned and saw her alarm.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  Kate slammed the door shut and leaned against it. “That was Greta.”

  Conor’s brain didn’t process the statement with any sort of efficiency. As though mired in sludge, it spun uselessly on the name—Greta. Greta who?—and chugged slowly into comprehension.

  “Sonia …”

  “… is Greta,” Kate prompted. “She had on a mask and wig when I saw her at the Clam-Gallas palace, but I recognize the voice. It’s her.” She threw herself on the bed and lay back, eyes to the ceiling. “I can’t believe this is happening to us.”

  Catching up, Conor sat down beside her. “An MI6 agent, working undercover as a white nationalist named Greta, is pretending to be a Bosnian refugee pianist named Sonia.” He immediately understood—and shared—Kate’s aggrieved disbelief. “I’ve no patience for this triple identity horseshit.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He lay back and joined her in a study of the ceiling. “What the hell is she playing at?”

  They had no answers, but after climbing back into bed he and Kate talked for another hour, trying to explain the agent’s behavior and how to respond to it. One obvious possibility was that she had been turned—or had never been loyal to MI6 in the first place. Instead of posing as a member of the organization she’d been assigned to infiltrate she might actually be one. Perhaps, acting on behalf of the New Přemyslids, she had worked her way into their enemy’s home, and had invented the “false flag” scheme as a means of achieving the group’s strategy. Of course, there was a hole in this hypothesis that Conor found hard to fill.

  “Greta covered her ass by fingering Ghorbani as the traitor the New Přemyslids were looking for, but then she blew her own cover by telling you about it at the opera. At that point, she knew you’d eventually be introduced to her here as Sonia. She had to assume you’d recognize her, which suggests she doesn’t care, and I wish to God I understood what that means.”

  “Frank said she was going to make contact with us,” Kate said. “Maybe he knows she’s here, and this is what he meant.”

  Conor considered the idea before rejecting it. “None of us even knew we’d be staying here until a few days ago. Frank got the idea to put us here after Greta told him Martin was a target for assassination.”

  “That’s what he told you,” Kate pointed out. “Or rather, that’s what he told Eckhard to tell you.”

  Surprised he hadn’t considered this angle, Conor bounced out of bed again. He flipped on the light and paced around the room, agitated, but finally shook his head.

  “Not that I wouldn’t put it past him, but what’s the point in lying to us? I don’t think Frank has a clue. She’s playing a role that’s different from the one he assigned her. I suppose the only way to find out why is to confront her with it. Let me have a go at her tomorrow when we’re practicing. It’s harder to lie when you’re concentrating on something else.”

  Even with this strategy decided, Conor continued to pace, lost in thought. He didn’t know how long he’d been at it when he heard Kate’s voice again.

  “Conor.” She was sitting up in bed with her arms wrapped around her knees, watching him. He had a feeling it wasn’t the first time she’d said his name.

  “Sorry?”

  “Shouldn’t we tell Frank about this?”

  It was the very question he’d been turning over in his mind as he circled the room, and he hadn’t decided until that instant. “No. At least not yet,” he added, seeing Kate’s worried frown.

  He remembered Frank’s voice on the phone earlier—cold and merciless. Conor didn’t know what sort of game this agent was playing, but he wanted some time to figure it out on his own. If it turned out to be a traitorous one, he dreaded the course of action his boss might demand of him.

  With everyone guarding secrets and fearing the others knew more than they should, the breakfast table was a scene of subdued tension the following morning. The Labuts were especially considerate of their guests and each other, and when Sonia appeared—fully dressed—no one bothered to pretend introductions were needed.

  Conor thought her more attractive wi
th her clothes on, but she was oddly colorless; even her eyes were a washed out blue. It seemed as though the hair dye she’d used to achieve that striking shade of silver was also leeching the remaining pigment from her body.

  She’d cultivated a youthful, avant-garde facade, probably to disguise the fact she was well beyond her declared age of twenty-two. A man twice her age probably wouldn’t notice such a detail, but Conor imagined a woman like Petra would.

  At the moment, Petra was feeding the baby, and he saw for himself Kate’s assessment was dead-on—the woman was completely smitten with the child of her husband’s mistress, and oddly possessive. When Sonia lifted him for a snuggle, Petra’s face darkened into impatient resentment.

  Leo was a jolly little snapper, with dark hair and hazel eyes, and his olive-tinted skin certainly took more from Martin than Sonia. Settled back in his highchair he held court at the head of the table, waving a hand and babbling amiably as if offering a toast to the company. The novelty of his presence helped relieve some of the awkwardness.

  “When do you like to practice?” Sonia asked. “Morning? Afternoon?” She took a seat directly across from him.

  He met her stare with an easy smile. “In general, whenever you like, but I need to schedule it around the practice for the concerto I’m playing on Tuesday night.”

  “Oh yes, the Mozart. I’m looking forward to hearing it. The Labuts have kindly included me on the guest list for the performance.”

  “Will you be at the welcome reception also?” Kate’s contrived innocence was so persuasive Sonia looked puzzled.

  “Also. Yes.”

  Sensing her temptation to further bait the woman, Conor asked Kate to pass the salt and shifted the conversation to safer ground. “Why don’t we get started after breakfast? I haven’t played the Strauss in years, so the sooner we crack on the better. I’ll just pop upstairs for my violin.”

  Back in their room, he and Kate had a quick meeting to review their separate assignments for the day. While he worked to peel back the layers of Sonia’s identities and pinpoint her loyalties, she would spend the morning sightseeing with Petra and collecting background on the Labuts.