The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3

by Kathryn Guare

  She directed this question to Lukas, who shook his head and gave a helpless shrug. Conor could only imagine the internal battle he was waging to remain in character for her—the stolid Castle Guard officer of unexceptional background who spoke no English.

  Once more, she began moving around the carriage with Leo pressed snugly against her, and none of them could bring themselves to interrupt her dreamlike rotation. Even Sonia refused to intervene. She remained sitting on the bench, watchful and silent, but completely motionless. Conor didn’t know how long they might have stayed frozen in place, but at last Petra stopped. She rested her lips against the baby’s head for a long moment before reaching for the carriage. She pulled it forward until it stood between herself and Lukas, and after gently laying Leo inside she straightened, and smiled fondly at the officer.

  “Ah, Lukas.” With her hand on his cheek Petra spoke to him in English. “My noble American friend, and my royal Czech lover. No secrets between us now. I have always known you and why you came to me, but I regret nothing and neither should you. For my whole life, men have looked and taken what they wanted without seeing anything, but you gave more than you took, and you were the only one who ever truly saw me.” She circled his neck, pulling him down to her face for a lingering kiss. “Forgive yourself, and try always to remember it was what I wanted.”

  Petra ran a hand over his shoulder and down his arm before letting it drop, and then in a darting movement of astonishing speed she turned and began sprinting away.

  Although they’d agreed such a gambit would be a futile delay of the inevitable, the formation Conor and Lukas mapped out had been arranged with the conviction that Petra would try to run. Through some collective intuition they’d anticipated her strategy—it was the unexpected direction she took that came as a shock. Instead of running to the east towards Kate or heading west in Conor’s direction, Petra was making straight for the ramparts and the wide, crescent-shaped observation terrace extending out from it, which offered a panoramic view over the terra-cotta roofs of Prague’s Little Quarter.

  Their instant of paralyzed horror gave her the only lead she needed. Although Lukas came to life first he did so with a lurch against the baby carriage in front of him, losing a step in an automatic grab at the handle to keep it from tipping over. Running from their opposite positions Conor and Kate closed in on her, but although Kate was at least ten yards in front he saw she hadn’t a prayer of catching Petra.

  “Stop her!” Conor began shouting at the tourists milling around in front of them. “For the love of God, will someone please stop her!”

  Instead of spurring the crowd to action, his cries only made them turn and stare at him. Their curious expressions shifted to alarm as he snatched the Walther from the holster at his back—a desperate move of last resort.

  “Kate, get down. Everyone get the fuck down. Now!” Kate ducked down quickly and lay flat against the ground. If everyone else had responded to his barked warning in this way Conor might have had a chance. Some did cower, but the rest scurried over the terrace in all directions, giving him no immediate opportunity for a clear, non-lethal shot. When the space finally opened, it was too late. Petra had swung herself over the terrace railing. Poised on its outer edge, she lifted her head to the sky and launched herself up into the air, arms spread wide. Conor sank to his knees, and for one breathless second before she dropped from sight, he saw the beadwork on her dress erupt in a flash of reflected sunlight.

  Lukas, who had surged ahead of him, stumbled to a stop and then continued on more slowly, passing Kate without noticing her. Rising from his knees Conor looked back at Sonia, standing with both hands pressed against her mouth, and gestured for her to stay with Leo. He continued forward to Kate, and after a tight, trembling hug they went to join Lukas, who’d already seen what he needed to and had crouched down next to the railing with his face in his hands.

  Petra had chosen her spot well. A few feet to either the right or left and she might have only broken bones on a brick-lined garden or on the steeply sloping roof of a building tucked against the base of the terrace. Instead, she’d found the wedge-shaped space between both that provided an unobstructed drop of at least a hundred feet.

  Below them her body lay crumpled on a patch of sand-colored cement, edging a lawn just beginning to send up new shoots of delicate spring green. There was little detail to see at such a distance, but in a cold sweat Conor had to move back from the railing. Walking a few steps away he took several deep breaths, swallowing hard while Kate followed him with her eyes, looking worried.

  When he came back a crowd had gathered at the railing, full of trite remarks and ignorant speculation. Conor wanted to scream and wave his gun at all of them, but they apparently didn’t recognize him as the wild man who’d done that a minute earlier. He subsided into anonymity and rested his arms against the railing, letting Kate rub her hand over his back in soothing circles. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have tolerated such outright coddling, but this time he didn’t object. It was helping.

  “I need to go report this to the Guard duty officer,” Lukas said, finally breaking the silence among the three of them. Gripping the railing, he rose from his crouched position, his face ashen. “It’s going to take a while. This will likely be a shared jurisdiction between the Castle Guard and local police. I hate to ask you this, but—”

  “We’ll go down and stay with her, Lukas.” Conor held his friend’s shoulder in a tight grip. “We won’t let her be alone.”

  Too overwhelmed to reply, Lukas nodded and quickly walked away.

  “She’s in a completely enclosed area,” Kate said, gazing down at the pitiful scene below. “We’ll need to figure out where it is and who owns the land.”

  Conor took her arm, gently pulling her away from the railing. “We know that already, love. It’s the back garden of the British Embassy.”

  30

  The scene at the British Embassy was in many respects a replay of the previous evening. They spent several hours alternating between meetings with now-familiar law enforcement representatives, and tedious intervals waiting for others to arrive and pose the same questions. It was close to midnight when Conor and Kate were finally allowed to leave. Sonia walked with them to the front door, and as they reached it she took Conor’s arm, drawing him back with an unusual question.

  “To exorcise a demon we follow our own path, yes? You are familiar with this idea, I think.”

  Conor nodded. “I walk it every day. I suppose we all do, in some way.”

  “Yes. Petra has followed hers to the end, and now I will make the journey—a different path, but I will begin tonight. One step, and then another. It’s how we start our lives, yes? And how we carry on with them.” Sonia gave him a warm smile. “Good night. Thank you for everything.”

  Neither he nor Kate registered these parting words as a final good-bye, but before long they discovered she had intended them as such. Just after five o’clock the next morning, Lukas rattled them awake with a phone call, delivering two extraordinary bits of news: Sonia and Leo had disappeared from the Embassy, along with all of their luggage, and the empty home of Martin and Petra Labut was engulfed in flames.

  “Do you want to go see it?” Kate asked after the call had ended.

  “Not particularly,” Conor said. “Do you?”

  “No, but I’m glad it’s burning.”

  “So am I.”

  Conor wondered which path Sonia had decided to follow, whether it had taken her to one of the many countries bordering the Czech Republic, or only to a quieter, more obscure district of the city she loved. Wherever she was, he wished her well.

  After sliding the mobile phone across the nightstand he lay on his back, hands folded on his stomach, listening to the sounds of the hotel’s early risers—doors banging, toilets flushing, the rhythmic click of a roller bag and its owner, moving past their door.

  “So. What should we do today?”

  Conor smiled, hearing Kate’s muffled, sl
eepy voice. Still only half awake, she had burrowed back under the down comforter.

  He rolled over and slipped an arm around her waist. “Sleep.”

  “Hallelujah.”

  They did get up, eventually. Conor had a rehearsal with the Czech Philharmonic at the Rudolfinum for the following evening’s concert, and later they took the tram to the Ram Gorse pub to pick up their travel identities and surrender their own to an express-mail envelope. The return visit was much like the first, with a few notable exceptions.

  This time the bartender was a heavyset woman sporting a halo of teased-out hair dyed an electric, jack-o’-lantern orange. Possibly she was the wife of the man they’d met previously. At any rate, she was just as dour. Conor delivered his line about the Liverpool football game and she regarded him with an impassive, protruding pout.

  “Is old, this code.”

  Conor spread his hands in apology. “It’s the only one I’ve got.”

  “You are the Irish one, yes?”

  “You’ve nailed it in one.” He smiled at her puzzled squint. “Sorry. I am, yes. The Irish one.”

  The rest of the process followed the previous pattern, and when they walked into the small, windowless room, its arrangements looked much the same, but the woman drinking a cup of tea next to the shining brass samovar was a lovely olive-skinned brunette who couldn’t have been much older than fifty. It might have been another woman entirely, except that the wheelchair—and the empty space between the seat and footplates—was the same.

  “How are you, Harlow?” Conor greeted her amiably. “Sure you’re looking younger every day.”

  She laughed. Her voice had a lower, more mellow tone than he remembered, but the breezy, quick wit was the same. “Really, this is nothing, darling. Come back next week and I’ll be a teenager with spots. I am sorry about the passcode. Carla’s quite vexed with me. I should have given you a new one when you were last here, but honestly, they’re always to do with football and I think I forget them on purpose.”

  They had tea with Harlow, a strong brew poured from the teapot diluted with hot water she dispensed from the samovar with great ceremony. Since the Fermature and its various assets had been drawn into their mission they talked more freely this time, but as before, her time was limited, and after tea she led them to her desk for the exchange of documents.

  When they stood to leave, Harlow smiled at Kate, catching her discreet glance at the wheelchair. “Yes, that’s not part of the disguise, I’m afraid, but the prosthetics are. Perhaps I’ll snap those on for you, next time you visit. Although the Service always rather liked having me in the chair. They’d wheel me out during training seminars to shock young agents—a flesh-and-blood cautionary tale of how missions can take the most dreadful turns. All in the line of duty, I suppose, but I prefer my present assignment a good deal more.”

  “Were you wounded in Russia?” Conor asked.

  “Clever man.” She regarded him through half-closed eyes, as though appraising his worthiness, before nodding. “It was the Soviet Union back then, but yes, you’ve got it right. Perhaps I’ll have more time to tell you about it some day. The tale was of some interest to a friend of yours. He came a long way to see me, just to hear it from my own mouth.”

  “A friend of Conor’s?” Kate asked. She shot him a questioning look, but Conor shrugged, equally mystified. His circle of colleagues in the spy community wasn’t wide, but he couldn’t pinpoint which of them had a paid a visit to the Ram Gorse pub.

  Harlow smiled at their puzzled expressions. “Come with me.”

  She spun around and rolled to the large safe door, which this time was already standing open. She went all the way to the end and stopped in front of a gray metal storage cabinet. Refusing Conor’s offer of assistance, Harlow got one of the doors open and maneuvered the chair closer. She reached down to the lowest shelf and removed a bundle of red paisley-patterned fabric and handed it up to him. Conor accepted it, carefully unfolding it to reveal a black Makarov handgun.

  Grimly, Harlow nodded at it. “At one time, that gun belonged to a Russian arms dealer. Vasily Dragonov, to be precise. I believe you’re familiar with him.”

  “I am, but we’ve never met.” His throat suddenly tight, Conor forced the words out in a gravelly rasp.

  “Nor had your friend, I gather—not formally, at any rate—but he seemed eager for the opportunity.”

  Conor made no reply. He wasn’t sure how to comment, or whether he should, but in his mind the pool of candidates who might have sought out this woman in her windowless bunker had just narrowed to one. Raising his head, he saw the same realization dawning in Kate’s eyes.

  He handed the gun back to Harlow and watched her wrap the fabric around it once again. She held the bundle in her hands, staring at it for a moment before she placed it back in the cabinet.

  “My … friend,” he said, once she’d closed the door and turned her chair to face him. “Where is he, do you know?”

  “I’m sorry.” The Fermature was back in official mode. “I can’t say any more. I’ve already pushed the boundaries of my position in saying this much. I only know of your connection because he told me his story as well.”

  Conor didn’t press her on this point. He and Kate left a few minutes later and walked in silence back to the tram stop, but after reaching it they finally looked at each other, acknowledging the significance of what they’d heard.

  “Where do you think he is?” she asked.

  Conor gave a dispirited sigh. “Somewhere in Russia. We might have guessed as much, I suppose, but this is a stronger clue than we had before.”

  They had been wondering—and worrying—about what had become of Curtis Sedgwick since the last time they’d seen him, six months earlier. Given the man’s troubled history, the possibilities were sobering. Although Conor had tried leveraging his intelligence connections to locate him, all inquiries had so far come up empty. For months he’d been wrestling with indecision as to whether he should get more serious about the effort to find him.

  He’d been paired with Sedgwick during his first undercover mission, when the American DEA agent had been contracted with MI6 to serve as his control officer. They’d begun their acquaintance as two halves of a fractious, mutually distrustful relationship, but they’d also traveled to hell and back with each other. As Sonia had observed earlier, with any shared experience—good or bad—it was hard to break an attachment with the only person who really understood what it meant, and what it had cost.

  In the end, they’d forged a bond that was more complicated than friendship and as unshakeable as brotherhood. Vasily Dragonov represented unfinished business for both of them, but this wasn’t the time or place to think about it. The tram arrived, and Conor pulled his mind back to more immediate business.

  “Let’s figure it out when we get home,” he said, ushering Kate ahead of him through the door. “We’ve been wringing our hands over the eejit for months. A few more days won’t make much difference.”

  31

  “I’m sorry Officer Hasek didn’t feel up to joining us this evening.” Frank handed Kate a glass of white wine and took a sip from his own. “According to Eckhard he looks quite a treat in a suit and tie.”

  “He is a handsome man,” Kate agreed, “but also a pretty exhausted one. We had dinner at his flat last night, and as soon as he’d served the coffee he fell asleep in his chair with the dog on his lap.” She smiled, remembering how mortified Lukas had been, waking from his nap to find his guests had done the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. He was grateful for their company, though—people he could talk with openly, who understood his grief and guilt and expected no explanations for his occasional long silences. She hoped they would stay in touch—they did have ancestors in common, after all.

  “What’s the news on Sonia?” she asked Frank. “Do you have any leads?”

  “None whatsoever,” he replied, smoothly. “To be honest, I’ve little appetite for the hunt. Oh, and in all the
excitement I’d forgotten to mention she isn’t the only agent who’s disappeared in the last few days. Your friend Joanna Patch has gone missing as well.”

  “Really,” Kate said, dryly. “Are you sure she hasn’t just gone on bivouac with the Increment?”

  He laughed. “Actually, her disappearance was reported by Colonel Albright, the thick-necked chap who engineered your kidnapping at Brecon Beacons. Insufferable man. He’s been on an unpaid administrative leave ever since. He and Joanna had been having an affair.”

  “Does anyone know where she might be?” Kate asked.

  “As I mentioned before, her last posting before Fort Monckton was Johannesburg, so there’s some suspicion she’s gone there, but we’re not very keen on chasing after her either. She’s saved us the bother of sacking her, and nobody wants to go to bloody Johannesburg.” Frank looked at his watch and finished his wine. “We should perhaps consider moving upstairs, ahead of the crowd.”

  Kate nodded and looked down the length of the Rudolfinum’s foyer, a handsome, bow-shaped hall paved in multi-colored marble. Smartly dressed concertgoers continued to stream in through the five arched entrances. The old wooden doors creaked, the glass in their frames rattling as the crowd streamed through. A flutter of nerves passed through her stomach. She might have called them sympathy pains, except at this point it seemed she was the only one having them. After a successful rehearsal the previous day, Conor had so mastered his stage fright that he’d been able to tease Kate about her anxiety on his behalf.

  “I expect you’re thinking I’ll make a hames of it,” he’d said, pretending offense. “That I’ll drop the bow, or fall on my face, or pop a string.”