The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence (2 page)

Trotting down the stairs onto the backyard’s flagstone terrace, he saw his mother standing in the open doorway. She looked tiny and frail, dwarfed by the massive farmhouse that framed her. He had stopped asking her every day if she felt all right. He knew she lied, and it made them both uncomfortable. Instead, he had learned to read the lines on her face as a more honest answer to his unspoken question. Looking at her as he came through the back door into the kitchen, he felt the heaviness in his heart lighten a bit. It was a good day.

Wordlessly, Conor raised a questioning eyebrow at her. His mother shook her head and spread her arms, impatiently nudging him forward. He stepped through into the large living and dining room, still brightly lit from the sun that poured through the casement windows opposite the fireplace. A tall, silver-haired man stood at one window, a teacup cradled in his hand as he looked out at the green pastures and the distant ocean. He appeared to be lost in thought. Conor made his presence known with a discreet shuffle of feet before speaking.
 

“How are you, sir? I’m Conor McBride. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Without a hint of being startled, the figure gracefully turned to face him, a smile of welcome on his face. For a fleeting moment, Conor had an impression of role reversal, as if he were the one paying a visit.

“Conor. It’s very good of you to see me.” The man’s voice had a deep, rich timbre. The accent was quintessential public school English, and his attire—beautifully tailored suit; tasteful, striped tie; and gleaming cap-toed shoes—indicated a fastidious sense of style. “I’m taking you from your work I’m afraid.”

“You are indeed.” Conor smiled. “Don’t think I’m not grateful. Will you take another cup of tea?”

The offer was graciously declined. Conor invited him to take a seat next to the fireplace and sat down in the one across from it. He waited for the visitor to introduce himself. The visitor seemed in no hurry to do so.

“I had the opportunity of hearing you play last evening in Tralee,” he said, crossing his legs and looking as if they were already old friends. The unexpected opening startled Conor.

“I hope you enjoyed it?”

“I enjoyed it immeasurably.” The large hazel eyes widened for emphasis. “I have rarely heard Locatelli’s capriccios played so confidently or so well. It was an extraordinary display of virtuosity.”

“Thank you.”

“I must admit I was quite astonished. Do you play often with that ensemble?”

“No. No, they’re just over from Dublin for a few nights. I’d played with them before, and the manager rang last month to ask me to be in the program.” Conor twitched a self- deprecating grin. “Most nights you’re more likely to find me fiddling for the crowd down at the pub here.”

“Certainly a far cry from the National Symphony Orchestra, isn’t it?” The elegant stranger inclined his head in sympathetic appraisal. “What a waste. I didn’t fully comprehend it until I heard you last night. Not your fault, of course, but what a criminal, bloody waste.”

Offered in a silky undertone, the observation struck with precision, like a concealed switchblade sliding between his ribs. It left Conor speechless. The voice across from him continued in a low murmur. “How bitter that must have been to lose your seat in the first violins, not to mention your growing career as a soloist. To trade hard-won success and recognition for this . . . pastoral obscurity on the edge of the sea, all because someone had to do penance for your brother’s crimes.”

Conor’s face had already lost its polite smile and most of its color. At this last remark, he came up out of the chair, rigid with anger. “I half expected something like this,” he said coldly. “Who the hell are you?”

The mysterious visitor seemed content with the reaction he’d provoked. He too rose, produced a card from an inside pocket of his suit, and presented it. “I beg your pardon,” he said, smiling an apology. “Small talk is not my strength. My name is Frank Emmons Murdoch. I am an agent with the British Secret Intelligence Service, more commonly known as MI6.”

Made of thick stock, with letters embossed in a tasteful font, the card was an appropriate match for its owner and equally inscrutable. No address or phone number. No contact details whatsoever. Conor examined it with a frown.

“MI6. Are you a spy, then?”

“Certainly not. I’d hardly be doling out business cards if I were, would I?”

“It’s not much of a business card. Don’t you have a badge or a warrant card, or something?”

The question prompted an indulgent smile. “And how would you authenticate it if I produced one? Have you ever seen an MI6 warrant card?”

“No, I suppose not.”

Conor continued glaring down at the card. The anxiety he’d felt earlier settled into an undefined dread. He turned his attention back to the extraordinary specimen in front of him. His speech, demeanor, and appearance were like those of a character pulled from an Edwardian drama. Conor had his own clichéd assumptions about the British upper class, but even he found it hard to believe their ranks could produce such a comprehensive stereotype. Was the man a genuine anachronism or was it an act?

“So?” he prompted, irritably. “I expect you’ve not come all the way from London to chat about my short-lived musical career. Let’s have it.”

Frank sighed, his mouth twisting sardonically. “It’s your brother, as I believe you’ve surmised. Thomas has made rather a bad mess for himself, I’m afraid, and he’s going to need your help. The matter is urgent, and your assistance will be required almost immediately. For an extended stretch of time, I’m afraid.” Frank took the card from Conor’s hand and began writing on the back of it. “You’ll need to be in London one week from today. The afternoon flight from Kerry to Stanstead is already booked, and so is your room at the Lanesborough Hotel. Quite nice, you’ll like it. Meet me in the hotel bar at six o’clock.”

“Hang on a minute,” Conor sputtered in slow-witted confusion. “What do you know about Thomas? Where is he, and what kind of mess—”

“All excellent questions, but I haven’t the time to go into them just now.”

Frank handed the card back. He reached for his briefcase, appearing to consider his errand complete.

“That’s it? You’re off your nut.” Conor stared at Frank incredulously. “I can’t just go flying off to—”

“Yes, quite.” Frank gave a perfunctory nod. “A good many arrangements to make, no doubt. I’d best leave you to it. Until next Thursday, then.”

His mother had, of course, been listening from the hallway. She stepped forward to see the visitor to the door while Conor stood, nailed in place, in the middle of the living room. He saw Frank’s patronizing smile falter as he turned to her, his lips straightening to a sober line of deference.

Anyone with a shred of intelligence needed only a glance at the fathomless gaze of Brigid McBride to recognize it as something unusual. It radiated a powerful, undefined force that seemed too big for such a small frame. Some looked and felt a twinge of uneasy fear and others a sense of wonder. Conor saw that Frank fell into the latter category. So far, it was the sole point in his favor.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. McBride.” The velvety voice sounded quite different without its flippant jocularity. “A pleasure to meet you both.”

The glance he threw over his shoulder as he followed her out of the room was grave with respect and, Conor thought, sympathy.

2

F
OLLOWING
F
RANK
’
S
DEPARTURE
,
HE
ARGUED
WITH
HIS
mother as they had not done in years—in fact, not since the last time they had discussed his brother. He didn’t know how to measure the “extended stretch of time” Frank had indicated, but a glimmer of inherited prescience told him it would be longer than he could bear. There were any number of reasons he couldn’t afford to be gone for very long; only one of them really mattered. In fear and frustration, Conor paced the living room, storming at her.

“Why must I do this, Ma? Thomas is a criminal and a loser, and God only knows what he’s up to that has MI6 over here looking for my help. Let him lie in the hole he’s dug for himself. He’s caused us enough trouble.”

“You don’t mean that, Conor,” his mother said. “He’s your brother.”

“And don’t I wish he wasn’t. He nearly ruined us, in case you don’t remember, and it’s been almost six years of my life and every penny I could earn to undo that damage.”

“I never believed it.” She turned away and walked toward the kitchen. “I don’t believe it now. He wouldn’t have done it on purpose. There must have been some reason he—”

“He’s a thief, Ma! He stole grant money meant for poorer farmers and disappeared with it. He blackened our name. He nearly sent me to jail and the two of us into bankruptcy. Now he’s shoveled up some new pile of shite that I’m supposed to dive into? Well, forgive me if I don’t leap at the chance. I don’t mean to spend the rest of my life following my brother into trouble. Isn’t it enough, already, what he’s taken? Can you think of anything I’ve left to give up, now?”

His mother hesitated in mid-stride as if struck, her thin shoulders slumping in defeat and sorrow. He would have given almost anything to have those last words back again, rattling irritably around in his head, maybe, but hurting only himself. After all, he was more to blame than anyone was, after Thomas. He’d signed his name to everything. If he’d paid a bit more attention . . .

His anger dissolved in a sigh of regret. The argument was over. It had been an academic exercise, anyway. They both knew he was going, and they both knew why. Despite the undeniable evidence, his brother’s crime was a continued source of grief and confusion for both of them, inconsistent with the person they thought he was. Conor wondered what kind of tale Frank had in store for him in London—another half-baked financial scheme or something worse? It seemed unlikely that the UK’s secret intelligence service would be stirring itself for a simple case of grant fraud.

In the end, he had to leave it all in Phillip’s hands—the farm, the house, his mother’s life—and when Conor presented the situation a few days later, he saw his own dubious misgivings reflected back at him.

“It’s a lot to ask of you, Pip,” he said, watching Phillip’s face uneasily. “Tell me now if you don’t think you can do it.”

“Will you ever leave off with that?” Phillip’s cheeks reddened. “It isn’t that. Your ma has been good to me; it’s no bother. I was just thinking that it all sounds a bit . . . well, crazy. Who is this fecker, after all? You think he knows where your brother is or how to find him?”

“Who the hell knows?” Conor sighed. “Everything that’s to do with my brother turns out to be crazy, it seems. I don’t know if I’ll find him or not, but I feel like I have to try.”

As he wrote out instructions and prepared, they all pretended it was for just a few days, but on the day he left, his mother dropped the charade. He could tell the pain was bad that morning, and the cool damp of the farmhouse didn’t help. He placed a lounge chair on the flagstone terrace behind the house so the late summer sunshine could warm her a bit while he took a quick hike into the upper pasture with his violin.

“Don’t go so far that I can’t hear. I’ll want to remember how it sounded.”

Her soft voice was almost carried away by the morning breeze rolling up from the ocean, but he caught it just in time. Pausing on the sloping hill, he turned to look back, a sudden ache in his throat preventing any reply for several seconds.

“I’ll stay close.” His husky reassurance was too faint for her to hear, but he gave her a nod and a wave of acknowledgment.

He climbed a little farther to a corner alcove created by one of the many intersections in the pasture’s network of stone walls. The spot was one of his favorites. Quiet and intimate, the little corner was sheltered enough to keep the sound from disappearing but airy enough to let it wander among the wall’s cracks and boulders in their endless variety of shapes and sizes.

Conor carefully lifted the rare and valuable Pressenda from its case for their final session together. After some internal debate, he had decided to entrust it to a climate-controlled vault at the local bank rather than leaving it to absorb the variable Irish weather without his regular attentions.

It was impossible to explain the relationship he had with this violin. He’d spent years learning to understand it, adapting to its quirks and changing moods and allowing it to lead him to whatever magic it wanted to project on any given day. It was a conversation that never grew old—one that engaged all his senses. His jawline could register the occasional, temperamental buzz before his ear had discerned it, and from the range of breathed aromas in the wood—thick and loamy in the damp, sharp and spicy in the heat—he could predict the adjustments needed to coax out the sound he wanted.

Lifting it to his shoulder, Conor brought the bow down across its strings in a light, affectionate greeting. A bright answering chord rose from the instrument, pressing up through the morning air. He started with vibrato exercises to loosen his hand and then settled in to the rhythm of his standard technical practice. The scale for the day was the four- octave G major, and the technique was legato. The musical articulation calling for the seamless transition between notes was one he could easily lose himself in, endlessly experimenting with posture, arm movement, and wrist angles while losing all track of time in the process.

Today he was more mindful of the clock and of his mother, who was waiting to hear something more interesting than the G major scale. He limited the practice to ten minutes and spent the rest of the hour running through a number of airs and traditional songs that he knew she would like. He finished by switching genres to play Rachmaninov’s
Vocalise
, an appropriate piece for that day’s concentration on legato.

The
Vocalise
was a complex composition concealed within a simple melody. It meandered in a stream-of-consciousness flow, and with a continuous motion, Conor’s bow pulled out phrases that looped and followed each other so closely that it was impossible to tell where one left off and the next began. It was a gorgeous but elusive narrative that escaped entirely in its final seconds, leaving a single note hanging in the air until it thinned and faded.