The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence (36 page)

“I
want
to tell you about it.” Sedgwick drove a fist into his knee, raised it again, and let it fall onto the bench between them. Conor looked at his averted profile, suspecting he knew what sort of story he was about to hear.

“Ready when you are,” he said, quietly.

With his chin still pressed against his chest, Sedgwick slid his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “It was my first field experience with the CIA, in St. Petersburg,” he began. “We were cooperating with the DEA, investigating groups that were expanding into arms dealing, using transit corridors they’d established for drug trafficking. The DEA had targeted Dragonov, and the CIA was supposed to gather intelligence on the corridors by infiltrating his drug-running business. He’d delegated most of it to the lower ranks, so that’s where they assigned me.”

His eyes flicked at Conor and tailed away again. “Like I said, it was my first operation, thirteen years ago. I was twenty-three, and my case officer was a dinosaur from the Cold War era. He’d spent most of his career turning Soviet physicists. He didn’t know shit about drug trafficking, but he’d logged thirty distinguished years and nobody at Langley knew what the fuck else to do with him. So he was in charge. He assigned my cover and threw me into it—no backup, no support since he didn’t know how—just me on my own, crawling around bars and strip clubs on the St. Petersburg docks, looking for the door to Dragonov’s lair.”

Sedgwick expelled a bitter laugh. “Well, I found it, and Jesus wasn’t I a star. I got hired into a mule gang, taking heroin packets off fruit trucks and bringing them to the docks to get repacked and sent to Helsinki. Within six months I’d learned enough to map the entire transit corridor from Tajikistan to St. Petersburg. The bosses back home were very pleased, and my pals in the mule gang loved me. I ended up in meetings with Dragonov several times. I doubt he’d remember me, but you never know, and I was pretty tight with his men in St. Petersburg. If any of them moved up to the inner circle, and if they ended up traveling with him . . . well, it was a risk we were prepared for, but we’ve got you now, so we can avoid it.”

He paused to light another cigarette. Snow had begun falling in fat, cottony flakes, some merging into larger clumps that dropped quickly and broke apart on impact. Conor rubbed them off his jeans as they landed, waiting for the story to continue, but realized the agent was struggling to get it started again.

“What happened?” he asked. “You got caught?”

“Oh, yeah, I got caught. Just not the way you think.” Sedgwick’s voice turned flat, impersonal. “It isn’t all that hard to look like a junkie or even act like one. That’s what it was supposed to be. An act. I was supposed to be pretending.” He glanced at Conor, a half-flinching squint. “What I was too young and stupid to realize was that once you’ve nailed it and have everyone convinced, ‘looking like’ and ‘acting like’ doesn’t cut it. Close isn’t good enough once you’re inside. I had to be flawless to get trusted, to get good intelligence, and the more I brought out, the more the bosses wanted. They didn’t want to notice what I was becoming—just sent me back for more. Of everything. I thought I could handle it and thought I was managing pretty well. Classic argument of a junkie—you’re sure you’re keeping all the balls in the air, even while you’re circling the drain.”

He faced Conor squarely and fell silent, offering an opportunity for question or comment. Conor could do nothing with the invitation. The questions he might have asked were not meant for Sedgwick, but for the shameless manipulators who had warped the talent of a twenty-three year old and extinguished his future, without a flicker of conscience.

He had an intimate knowledge of the hazards involved in assuming a false identity, but his exposure to that danger had been a mere flirtation by comparison. He would not have considered until now that he’d gotten off lightly.

He said nothing, and with a wistful smile Sedgwick looked away again. “Well, the short version of all this is that sometime during the second year of the operation, I got picked up in a drug raid. I don’t remember it, don’t even know where I was. It was four months before my controlling officer tracked me down in prison.”

“Oh my God. You’ve got to be kidding.”

The agent’s breath caught in a choked laugh. “I’m not sure he was looking very hard. It was tricky getting me out without burning the whole operation. I didn’t get a lot of sympathy from my superiors. I got a voucher for rehab, then they reassigned me, and then I flamed out, and we started it all over again. And then they got tired of me. That’s when I started freelancing. Worked with MI6, did a few jobs for Australia, a few for Canada—botched several of them. I was pretty much at the end of the line when Walker dug me up, offering one last chance and the prospect of a little revenge. He’s been studying the guy for twenty years, but I’m the only agent who’s ever been in a room with him.”

“Seems like you made the most of it,” Conor ventured. “Last chance was the charm, maybe?”

“No, I was well on the way to wrecking that one, too, before I finally got a grip.” A shaky grin skittered over Sedgwick’s face. “Some people find Jesus. I found a four-foot tall Indian saint and an Irishman with fists like concrete. Maybe that’s what I’d needed all along—the right balance of compassion and violence.”

He bent forward, ruffling the top of his head to shake the snow from his hair, and sat up straighter. A trace of sarcasm surfaced as he watched Conor speculatively.

“So, there you have it,” he said. “Does it all sound relevant, now that you know?”

“It does, in a way—to me anyway,” Conor said, stung by the mild dig and its undeniable justice. “I’m sorry if you felt forced to talk about it.”

“I wasn’t forced,” Sedgwick corrected. “I know the conventional wisdom about me. Most people, I don’t give a shit what they think, but I wanted to tell you. It’s not a story that covers me in glory, but now at least you know it wasn’t a lifestyle choice. I don’t know why that matters to me, but it does.”

“I never thought it was a lifestyle choice.”

“Really?” Sedgwick cocked an ironic eyebrow. “Never?”
 

“Well—” He was rescued from further embarrassment by the sound of a door opening above them. Costino darted out onto the deck. The glow from the flashlight in his hand bathed his face in moon-colored light, accentuating a look of faint alarm. It gave them both the comic relief they needed.

“Look who it is,” Conor chirped up at him. “You’ve a queer old look in your eyes there, Tony. Which were you thinking, now, that we’d been kidnapped or that we’d deserted?”

34

T
HEY
WERE
BACK
IN
THE
SUV
AT
TEN
THIRTY
THE
FOLLOWING
morning. The meeting with Dragonov was not until noon, and his hotel was only a few kilometers from the safe house, but Walker’s insistence on building in ample travel time met with no resistance. Everyone was anxious to get moving.

Geographically, Gulmarg was known as a mountain shelf. A wide, bowl-shaped meadow sitting twenty six hundred meters above sea level, it had first gained popularity as a hill station retreat for the British during the “Raj” era. Remnant artifacts of their earlier rule still dotted the landscape. A small Anglican church sat isolated in the middle of the meadow, flanked on one side by the world’s highest golf course, now buried under several feet of snow.

The Gulmarg Alpine Cottage sat in a high, remote clearing on the opposite side, near the gondola, and Walker’s plan for approaching it involved a double-pronged strategy. Midway up a steep, winding road leading to the hotel, a trailhead marked a trekking path to the property. It snaked up through a forested area and ended at the hotel’s front entrance. The plan was for Walker and Sedgwick to hike up the path, posing as recreational tourists, while Costino drove Conor and Thomas up to the hotel’s small parking area. They would wait for the two agents to emerge from the trail and take up positions outside, and then Conor and Thomas would make their way to the lobby, leaving Costino to remain with the car.

As Sedgwick predicted, the first crack in this precisely choreographed production was one they hadn’t anticipated.

The wet snowfall from the previous evening was now frozen on the road, leaving it slick and treacherous. They reached the trailhead, but as soon as it braked, the Range Rover could progress no further. It lost all traction, wheels spinning uselessly against the ice. The only remedy was to creep back down to a level spot on the road for a new running start. Costino was assigned the task while the rest of them started up the trail.

“Why don’t we leave it here?” he protested, turning a pleading gaze from one face to another, seeking an ally. “Won’t it look weird for me to drive up alone and sit in the parking lot? Greg? Why don’t I come with you? I can be another hiker.”
 

“Because we might need the car, Tony,” Walker explained, beginning with ominously exaggerated patience and finishing with a roar. “And if we do, we might not want it to be stuck on the ice, in the middle of the fucking hill. Now, do what I tell you. Get in the goddamned car and figure out a way to get it up there.”

“Okay, sorry.” Costino backed a few steps away, biting his lip, but then his cold-reddened cheeks dimpled with a reassuring smile. “Good luck, everybody. I’ll see you on the other side.”

He trotted back to the car and disappeared around the side of it as the four of them started up the trail.

It was a gorgeous route, winding through a hushed landscape of fragrant conifers, but the path was long, rocky and covered in snow, making for a difficult climb. By the time they’d reached the halfway point, Conor’s convalescent lungs were protesting. He kept his head down to avoid distraction, concentrating on the effort required, but when he lifted it after a few minutes to check their progress, he saw a shape dart into his field of vision.

A boy? Yes, it was a boy. Hindu.

The population in Jammu & Kashmir was largely Muslim, but judging by his tilak—a thick horizontal smear of yellow paste across a narrow forehead—the little boy that materialized in front of him was not only Hindu but also a young devotee of the supreme deity Shiva, creator and destroyer of worlds. He looked to be about ten years old. He was thin, stunted, and dressed raggedly, with a head full of brown hair sticking up in all directions. He had stepped out from the trees onto the path and was smiling up at him with flashing white teeth, holding out a cluster of marigolds, cupped in two small hands.

Where on earth had he found them in this weather? “Conor. Don’t take the flowers, dammit.”

“Why not?”

“You know why.” About twenty meters ahead of him, Walker glared back in irritation. “They’re not free. He wants money for them, and if you give money to one, we’ll have a dozen more popping out of the woods, and we don’t need that.”

Conor stuffed his hands into his pockets, unconvinced. The path ahead and behind them was empty. He didn’t believe a dozen small children were hiding among the trees, ready to stream out with fistfuls of marigolds. The boy toggled his head, smiling again, and moved his hands to indicate a small shrine just off the path. It sat atop a broad, whitewashed platform, a cement block with an elaborately carved archway. Within its niche the figure of Shiva—in traditional dance posture—gazed out with cool serenity.

Walker pivoted and strode off up the trail. With a wink, Conor plucked two blossoms from the boy’s hands and tucked a grimy wad of rupee notes into the pocket of his threadbare jacket. He put one marigold into the niche and the other into his own pocket and began to turn away, but then he looked again at the child. Warmer temperatures would be on the way soon, but it was an overcast, viciously cold day, and the boy’s thin denim jacket was no proper protection against it.

With a furtive glance up the path, he removed the Pashmina scarf wrapped around his neck. It was wide enough to serve as a shawl, and as he quickly wound it around the small body, the child’s eyes grew round with wonder. When he was well wrapped, he reached for Conor’s wrist and pressed it to his forehead in gratitude. Conor touched his shoulder and stepped away.

“Off you go,” he whispered, repeating the words in Hindi and urging the boy in the opposite direction. “Go on home, now. I’ll catch hell if he sees you.”

He watched the child scamper off down the trail and then started off to catch up to the others. When he reached them a few hundred meters short of the clearing, Walker had called a halt to make final preparations.

The Srinagar Criminal Investigation Division had issued them two police radios for communications. Walker had given one to Costino and kept the second. Checking in now, he learned the two CID officers who had established the listening post in the room next to Dragonov had been joined on the scene by six additional undercover officers—far more than expected. They were stationed at various locations both inside and outside the hotel. He communicated with the officer in charge, confirming that Dragonov and his men were in the suite, and then began a test to ensure Thomas’s body wire was transmitting properly.

During the momentary lull, Conor opened his coat to tighten his gun holster. Propped against a tree with his arms crossed, Sedgwick glanced at him and gave a low cry of surprise.

“The Walther? Christ, McBride, who told you to bring it? You can’t wear that in there. They might search you.”

Conor’s eyes stretched in confusion. “I’m supposed to be his bodyguard. What’s the use of a bodyguard without a gun?”
 

“They don’t think you’re a bodyguard,” Sedgwick insisted. “They think you’re his brother, and—”
 

“I am his brother,” he retorted.

Walker ripped out his earpiece and marched over to him. “Take it off.” His fists were poised at hip-level. “Take it off and hand it over.”

Conor shook his head slowly, a steel-tipped dread scissoring into his stomach. He had been on edge from the moment they’d left the safe house that morning but had not felt frightened until now. “No.” His refusal was categorical. “I won’t bring him in there unarmed.”