The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence (9 page)

“No, that’s not what I meant.” He saw Frank had misinterpreted the remark. He forced down his grief and cleared his throat. “I don’t want to sound overconfident, because I’m far from it. I’m scared as hell in fact, but I do believe I’ll get back, mostly because she seems to think I will. It’s just . . . well, it’s just not likely to be soon enough—for her.”
 

“Ah. I see.” Frank nodded. “I’m sorry. I wish this could have somehow been made easier for you.”

“Thank you.” Conor glanced again at the screen above them and saw the gate number for his flight was now posted. “Time to get the show on the road, I suppose.” He drained his glass and rose. “Thanks for the parting glass, Frank. And thank you, for this.” He slipped the necklace over his head and tucked the cross beneath his shirt. “It means a lot. More than you probably realized.”

“I’m glad of that. You are most welcome,” Frank said.

“Not that your little packet of dirt isn’t special too,” Conor added with a grin.

In making their farewells, Frank had a final talisman to bestow, one of his ubiquitous cards, this time with a phone number and password on the back. The implication was clear, and from the briefing dossier he’d reviewed, Conor knew it was a breach of protocol.

As soon as the wheels left the ground on his flight to Mumbai, he was officially serving under the direct supervision of Agent Curtis Sedgwick. No other intelligence officer had any business providing him with instructions, much less the number to a private, secured phone.

He took the card without expression, a slight nod of acknowledgment the only indication that he understood. The two men shook hands and parted. He intended to study the information, commit it to memory once he was settled on board, and destroy the card. He didn’t realize as he tucked it into a fold of his wallet that he would never give it another thought.

O
NCE
SETTLED
INTO
his economy-class seat in the rear of the plane, Conor indulged in some jaded speculation about the mission ahead of him. He didn’t expect it to go according to plan.

The briefing books in their elegant detail gave the illusion of having anticipated every conceivable contingency. There were no dead ends in any of the “decision trees” the back room planners had constructed. Every question had an answer, every problem a solution.

Bollocks.

He had weathered enough life experiences to know the most finely tuned plan could evaporate in an instant. He considered it unlikely that this one would stay intact for very long.

Low expectations notwithstanding, the first stage of the mission was the least complicated: sit on a plane and wait to be collected outside the arrivals hall. He assumed it was likely to proceed as designed, but in reality, the operation was officially underway less than an hour when it jumped the track. More than the speed, he was startled by the ease with which a random circumstance could make hash out of ten weeks of indoctrination. In this case, the random circumstance took the form of the occupant of seat 51B.

The first surprise was that seat 51B had an occupant at all. He was in 51A, next to the window, in one of the few rows with only two seats. His instructions for the flight had been unequivocal. He was to remain quiet and anonymous, avoiding unnecessary conversation and making every effort to appear as invisible as possible. He presumed this meant someone had ensured that the aisle seat would remain empty. Surely an intelligence expert of any quality—particularly a British one—would not expect an Irishman to sit next to someone for nine hours without talking.

No such precaution had been taken, however. Conor therefore felt only partly culpable for the events that began when he turned his head from the in-flight magazine and met the serene, brown-eyed gaze of an older Indian woman. She had materialized soundlessly in the seat next to him and now sat watching him placidly, unmoved by his flinch of surprise. Only her eyebrows twitched with amusement.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you were there.”

The woman touched her forehead with the tip of a long, thin finger. “You are deep thinking,” she said, toggling her head from side to side. “I am watching you many, many minutes. Not reading. But so deep thinking.”

Conor smiled. “I guess you’re right. There wasn’t much in it worth reading.”

He tucked the magazine into the seat pocket and glanced forward at the plane’s open door. Passengers continued to board at a sluggish pace. He tried looking out the window for a few minutes but finally gave up and turned his attention back to his seat companion.

Her weathered face was thin and lined, but a thick, gray braid of hair draped over her shoulder gave her a girlish appearance. It was difficult to judge her age; she might have been anywhere between fifty-five and seventy. The voluminous folds of her crimson and gold sari suggested a more substantial frame, but the embroidered length of cloth was not sufficient disguise. She was remarkably small and frail, and despite a gleam in her eyes, she appeared to be in rather poor health. Her breathing sounded labored, whistling in and out with a high-pitched wheeze. And she was still looking at him.

She was going to be impossible to ignore. With an internal shrug, Conor surrendered to the inevitable, but before he could speak, she leaned forward with a smile.

“What is your good name, please?” The South Asian intonation added a musical quality to her words.

“My good name is Con.” He made a conscious attempt not to grimace. “Con Rafferty. And you?”

“I am Kavita Kotwal.”

“Shrimati Kavita.” He automatically applied the honorific as he had been taught, which made her beam with surprised pleasure. “
aapse milkar khushi hui
. I’m very pleased to meet you.”

“Yes, very pleased. Also.” She inclined her head in a graceful gesture of greeting. “You are speaking very good Hindi.”

“I’m sure I don’t do it justice, but I’ve enjoyed learning some of it. It’s a beautiful language.”

“
Haan
. Yes,” she agreed. “In Mumbai, the people are also speaking Marathi and Gujarati. Those you speak also?”

“I’m afraid not,” Conor replied. “Hindi was about all I could handle. That and a bit of Urdu.”

“
Accha
.” She nodded in satisfaction. “Hindi is better. Urdu is best. These are the languages of my home region. Uttaranchal. You must visit. This is first time in India? You are making the tour?”

“I . . . ehm, yes, first time,” he said evasively, and turned again to assess the boarding process. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Not making the tour, I think,” she murmured, as if to herself. “Not holiday time.”

“Sorry?”

“Too much deep inside.” She tapped her head again with a meaningful look. “Eyes too much far-off. Not a holiday face.”

He closed his eyes for the length of one long sigh, wondering if this might be a final test concocted by his employers. It was an early and unwelcome demand on his prevarication skills, and he felt it particularly unfair that out of four hundred passengers, the psychic Indian grandmother was seated next to him.

“I’ll try to work on it,” he said lightly and then redirected the conversation. “What about you? Have you been on holiday in London?”

“Yes, for wedding. My grandnephew. Wedding is . . . ” She paused to take a deeper breath. “Wedding is like good holiday, yes? Many people, all party-party, and beautiful city. We have been—” She broke off, winded, and leaned back in her seat, breathing heavily for several seconds before speaking again. “Sorry, sorry. This is some small chest troubles I am having few weeks now.”

Conor regarded her with a nervous frown. “Are you traveling alone?”

“No, no, no.” Her hand waved vaguely at the seats in front of them. “Daughter is there, son-in-law. Three granddaughters also there.”

“Ah, right.” He felt somewhat relieved. “Good.”

“Yes, yes. This is good. Many family is there.” She appeared to understand his concern and gave his arm a reassuring pat, but then she leaned in closer and offered a mischievous wink. “But no husband. He is not for holiday and party. Husband is home.”

“I see.” He laughed. “Is that good as well?”

“Yes, good! This is very good!” She sat back and began to laugh—a slow, irresistible chuckle that gave way to a fit of coughing. She covered her mouth with the shawl that had been lying in her lap and looked at him with a helpless wave of her hand, her eyes still shining with laughter even as she struggled to catch her breath.

Conor brought out the water he had picked up before boarding. He was still fumbling to support her and help her drink from the two-liter bottle when reinforcements began arriving. With another quick twist of her hand, Kavita confirmed the first arrivals as her family members and made introductions between gasps.

“Daughter, Parvati. Son-in-law, Sukhet. Granddaughters. Surabhi. Deepa. Bhuvi.”

Another eight or nine Indian passengers—later identified as additional wedding guests—pressed up behind the family and filled the aisle across the plane. They strained forward, calling out questions in Hindi. This excited the curiosity of other passengers, who began turning in their seats and peering toward the rear of the plane.

The commotion drew a response from the flight attendants as well, who quickly swarmed up both aisles, asking everyone to take their seats. In whatever direction he looked, all eyes were fixed on him and the small woman beside him. With wry amusement, he realized he had become one of the two most conspicuous passengers on the plane.

Off to a rattling start
, he thought. So much for anonymous invisibility.

8

I
N
CONTRAST
TO
THE
BOARDING
PROCESS
,
THE
FLIGHT
ITSELF
was comparatively calm, but not uneventful, as Conor found himself absorbed into the tightly knit community of Kotwals and Kotwal friends and neighbors. Ministering to Kavita, her daughter Parvati produced a small brown bottle and filled a dosage cup with something that looked like treacle and smelled like diesel fuel. Kavita tossed it back as though it were a shot of the finest whisky. The cough subsided, and she was soon asleep, breathing in a soft, regular wheeze.

To the acute but helpless exasperation of the flight attendants, a steady stream of visitors filled the aisle when she woke a few hours later. Many bent to touch the feet of Kavita- ji, and to Conor, they offered homemade snacks, staring at him with frank, lively interest as he tentatively bit into them. The three granddaughters, teenagers with straight, dark hair and arms bedecked with gold bangles, peeked at him from beneath long lashes and converged in shy giggles whenever he glanced at them. The men gave hearty handshakes and asked a lot of questions. He stuck to the personal history of his alias, relieved that he had taken the time to master its details.

In the last hour of the flight, as the plane descended, Kavita grew feverish, and when they landed, she was too weak to stand. He appealed to one of the flight attendants, a young redhead who had been the most tolerant of all the crew. “Is there a wheelchair that might be brought in for her?”

“Oh, it would take ages to get one. We didn’t call it in ahead, did we? And even then it might not be a proper aisle chair, just the standard sort that would never fit down here.”

They both regarded Kavita and her surrounding entourage with a puzzled frown.

“Poor little dear. She’s quite done in, isn’t she?” the flight attendant said. “And none of these blokes look fit for the job. Can you carry her out yourself ? I can bring your bags to the jet way, if you like.”

Conor nodded. “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

Carrying Kavita was effortless—she weighed no more than a small, thin child—but when they cleared customs and entered the pandemonium of the arrivals hall, he grew impatient with the absurdity of the situation. There still wasn’t a wheelchair in sight, his bags were in the hands of some obliging cousin up ahead, and he was caught in the unstoppable tide of Kavita’s surrounding entourage. He tried to express a concern to Sukhet, her son-in-law, a short man with a balding, oval-shaped head and large round eyes, but his voice was lost in a cacophony of traffic and shouting as they emerged into a warm and hazy Mumbai night.

Arriving well after midnight, he’d assumed it would be quiet outside the airport and relatively easy for Curtis Sedgwick to find him. He was wrong. The scene outside the arrivals hall was anything but quiet.

The sidewalk beyond the security railing teemed with people standing massed against the barrier, all craning for a better view of the single exit out of the airport. Some stood silently, holding signs with the names of people they’d come to claim. Others gave animated shouts, hailing tourists who wandered through the door and gazed about in confusion. A continuous stream of auto-rickshaws packed the road beyond the sidewalk, and a sputtering roar filled the air as they competed for space with the taxis and vans in their midst.

Conor searched for a thin, blond man of medium height who was presumably somewhere in the crowd searching for him. Then he looked down at Kavita to see her gently fingering the silver pendant that had slipped from beneath his shirt. She gazed up at him with a wise, affectionate expression that stirred an uncomfortable emotion in his chest. Abruptly, he shifted his gaze away and hurried to rejoin the group, which had assembled in front of a black mini coach.

He carried Kavita to a wide bench seat at the rear of the coach and grappled with the seat belts for several minutes, trying to find some way of securing her. Finally, he straightened and addressed Parvati, his voice conveying greater patience than he felt.

“This isn’t going to work. There isn’t any way to buckle her in while she’s lying down. Once you start moving, I’m afraid she’ll—”

As if on cue, the mini coach lurched forward. They both leaped to keep Kavita from tumbling onto the floor as the vehicle swung from the curb. Quickly recovering his footing, Conor spun in alarm. “Holy shit, what’s he doing? Wait, stop the bus!”