The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence (30 page)

Archbishop de Cunha’s face lit up with a broad smile, and Kavita’s gurgling laugh rang through the courtyard.

“Very good,
beta
. Very clever. He is my nephew.” She reached up to give the taller man an affectionate pat on his chest. “My sister’s son. I was bringing Radha here to meet him and to be showing her this place. We have talked of many things together. Now I will be talking to you, and we will see what is to be done.”

“Something needs to be done?” Conor asked.

At this, she and her nephew exchanged a nod of understanding. The archbishop inclined his head to each of them and wished them an enjoyable visit. With swift, stately elegance, he returned to the building, leaving the three of them standing in the courtyard, looking at each other.

Conor’s question had come out sounding strained and overly casual. He’d seen the sign for St. Patrick ’s Junior College for Girls when they entered the complex and had immediately understood what Kavita was plotting. Just a few evenings earlier, they had discussed the question of Radha’s education, after she’d gone to her room. He hadn’t expected things to progress so quickly and was surprised by how conflicted he felt about it.

It was unquestionably the right thing for her. She would be safe, comfortably beyond the reach of Rohit Mehta. She would be given the chance to learn and thrive in a stable environment. If it was not for this that he had committed larceny to bring her out of Kamathipura, then for what? She deserved the opportunity; it was his duty to facilitate it. And yet, it was difficult—more painful than he had ever imagined—to think of leaving Agra without her.

“Do you not think so?” Kavita prodded, gently. “Truly, she is
choti bahan
, ‘little sister’ to you, and you are very loving, but is it being wise to carry her with you, where you are going? Will you carry her farther even, one day, when you are going home? There is a place for her here. Is it not better for Radha to remain?”

“Yes. Of course it is.” He forced the words past the dryness in his throat. “Have you talked with her? Does she want to stay?”

She nodded. “We have talked. I believe she wants it, but so devoted she is to her
bhaiyya
. What you will be wanting—this is very important to her.”

“I understand,
ji
. Where is she?”

“She is just there by the church, sitting with Curtis. He reached this morning also.” Kavita motioned across the courtyard with a sigh. “This troubling matter, not so easy to fix, I think.”

Beyond a large garden of flowering shrubs, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception sat at the center of the compound. It was a long, Victorian-style confection, painted in creamy yellow. On the steps in front of the main door, Radha and Sedgwick sat together. Their heads were bowed, almost touching, their attention focused on Sedgwick’s right arm, which was turned up and lying across her knees.

Thomas sucked in his breath, and Kavita wagged her head sadly. “Yes. He is struggling also, Tom-ji. He will not speak of it to me. I think maybe he does not understand even, but you see how it is.”

Conor could see it well enough also. With his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows, Sedgwick’s lean, tanned arms were plainly visible, and the trails of angry red marks scored along the underside of each looked raw and painful, even at this distance. Radha appeared to be rubbing them with ointment. He couldn’t see Sedgwick’s face, but it was clear that he was speaking and that she was listening intently. Every few seconds, she looked up at him, her eyes wide and solemn.

“Oh my God,” Conor breathed, feeling a queasiness in his stomach. “Does that mean what I think it does?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Thomas said brusquely, but then added in a softer voice, “At least . . . I mean, Christ, I hope not.”

“No, you are right in this,” Kavita reassured him. “He is taking no drugs. He is remaining strong, Tom-ji.”

Thomas breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s the scars,” he explained, seeing Conor’s confusion. “In some ways, it’s good they never faded. They remind him what he’s been through, but he says they sometimes itch like hell. That’s how it works on him now, tickling at him when his defenses are low. He’s managed to fight it for two years, but every so often he tears his arms apart, usually in his sleep.”

They watched Radha carefully roll the sleeve down over Sedgwick’s right arm and reach for his left. Thomas grimaced in sympathy. “I haven’t seen them this bad in a long while. I’m surprised he’s letting her do that for him, though.”

“I asked him to,” Kavita said, acknowledging with a shrug that it made Sedgwick’s submission a foregone conclusion. “It is good for them to know one another better, for her to understand the menace of the thing that reached for her and for him to accept tenderness and help another, as he has been helped.”

“I wonder what brought it on,” Conor mused. He felt a reluctant, growing respect for the agent, for his perseverance in what had to be a weary struggle. “Do you suppose he had another run-in with the Khalil gang?”

“I doubt it,” Thomas said. “If anything, he’s better when he’s kept busy.”

“You were very angry with him,” Kavita suggested. “So much yelling that first night on the train.”

“I had good reason to be angry. Ah, go on now, Kavita,” Thomas scowled, his face incredulous. “You’re not saying he’s ripped his arms to pieces because I yelled at him. Sure we’ve yelled at each other before, fairly often as a matter of fact.”

She took his arm, giving it a small shake. “He is afraid that soon he will miss your yelling. Radha has her
bhaiyya
and Curtis also. You too have been big brother to him, and this bond is everything for him. He grew well with you caring for him. This business of yours moved slowly, but now it becomes quick. When it is finished, you also will go away. He sees this already, and it is frightening for him. You had not seen it.”

“No. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” Thomas looked down at the tiny woman, his surprise changing to distress. “That’s a hell of a thing to put on me, you know. A hell of a thing.”

He abruptly turned and made a quick circuit around the courtyard’s central fountain. Conor saw he was close to the breaking point.

“When do I get some rest from all this?” Thomas hissed desperately. “I promised to see it through with him, but am I meant to stay a fugitive my entire life?”

“Thomas, take it easy,” Conor began, but his brother flung an arm in his direction and continued in a strangled voice.

“I ran away. I abandoned obligations and left my family to suffer the consequences. Is it wrong that I might like to go back and clear my name, and—please God—beg my own mother’s forgiveness before she dies? Is that what counts as betrayal now? Is that considered desertion?”

“
Bas
.”

Kavita’s voice was not loud, but the word cracked emphatically in the courtyard. Thomas looked as though he’d been punched. He sank onto the edge of the fountain at the center of the courtyard, and she came to stand before him. Conor followed and sat down next to him.

“I’m sorry,
ji
. I didn’t mean to be yelling at you,” Thomas said, morosely. “I do understand what you’re saying. It’s no one-way street, after all. God knows Sedgwick has been there for me plenty of times.”

He scrubbed his hands over his face and then looked at them both with a weary sigh. “So, what now?”

“No more of this nonsense, talking of ‘betrayal’ and ‘desertion,’” Kavita said. “Be a bit more calm. Matters will arrange themselves without such drama. Only let him know that it is well between you. Help him to know that your strength will find him, even if you are not here.”

Thomas rolled his eyes with a faint groan and looked at Conor. “I’m not much good at this.”

“Nope, me either,” Conor said. “Looks like we both have some work to do,
bhaiyya
.”

Thomas nodded. “It seems unfair. No matter what we do, we’re always leaving someone behind.”

“In time, we leave everyone behind,
beta
, but something of us remains, always.”

Kavita had turned to look at Conor as she spoke, and her eyes filled with a bright, sad sympathy. Again, he felt the return of that portentous, jittery tapping at the back of his brain. It was a whisper of something he couldn’t quite hear. He could only feel its feathery breath, freezing his heart.

It wasn’t long before Radha led Sedgwick—unshaven and noticeably subdued—over to the courtyard, and the two brothers stoically took up their assignments. Thomas and Sedgwick returned to the train station in preparation for their departure that evening. Conor asked Radha and Kavita to show him some of the places they had seen during their visit to the cathedral. They strolled around the gardens and came to St. Patrick’s Junior College, where the archbishop joined them, as if by chance. He guided them through the building, introducing teachers and describing the studies underway in various classrooms they passed. When they had finished, Conor sat with Radha in a small grotto behind the cathedral as twilight descended.

“Do you think it is a good place, Con-ji?” she asked, watching his face anxiously. “Would you be happy for me to be staying here?”

“I think it’s a very good place,” he assured her. “I’d be happy for you to stay, but more important, I think you will be happy here. Do you think so as well?”

Her face relaxed in relief. “Yes. I think so, and I am glad you think this way, too.
Shrimati-ji
says I will be learning so much, and if I am studying well, then in some time I will go to university. I can become nurse, Con-ji! A good one! Really and truly.”

“You’re a good one already, love.” He put an arm around her. “Really and truly.”

They had supper with Archbishop de Cunha, and after the meal, Conor brought Radha out to the courtyard where a cycle rickshaw had arrived to escort the new pupil to her quarters. A smiling nun in a gray habit was waiting, along with a friendly young girl who had clearly been brought along for moral support.

Her small bag of clothes and personal items had been sent over from the train earlier in the afternoon. Conor put it into the rickshaw, and after taking a steadying breath, he turned to face her. The moonless night wasn’t dark enough to hide the look of pain on her face.

“Will you be coming back, Con-ji?” she asked in a small voice. “Will you be visiting me sometime?”

He hesitated, wanting to lie and knowing he couldn’t. He took another shaky breath. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I know that I want to, and if I can, I will.”

She nodded, lips trembling. “You will be going back to your home place.”

“Yes. I think so.”

In the next instant, her fine, small features had broken into pieces, and Conor was on his knees, pulling her into his arms. Her felt her tears soaking his shirt and tried desperately not to add his own to them. When she had cried herself out and grown quiet, he lifted her up into the rickshaw and gently pulled her arms from around his neck.

He arranged the
dupatta
that was always falling from her shoulder and then, smoothing her hair, kissed the top of her head and stepped back. She caught his arm and gave it one last squeeze. “I am missing you already,
bhaiyya
,” she said, bravely meeting his eyes with sad composure. “And you? Also? Are you missing your Radha?”

Conor nodded, fighting to keep his voice level. “I am,” he said, softly. “I am already missing my Radha.”

29

T
HE
ARCHBISHOP
’
S
SEDAN
RETURNED
C
ONOR
AND
K
AVITA
TO
THE
Cantonment Station with just fifteen minutes to spare before the train’s seven o’clock departure. The streets of Agra were even more engorged with traffic than earlier, but the uproar seemed remote as observed from within the hermetically sealed vehicle. A muffled echo was all that penetrated its quiet interior.

Conor spoke little during the ride to the station. He felt bone tired, emotionally whiplashed, and the car’s supersonic air conditioning was aggravating his lungs. He hunkered down into the soft leather and dispiritedly watched their progress through the city, trying not to breathe too much.

He rallied when he arrived on board the private car and found Thomas and Sedgwick lazily sprawled across the sitting room furniture, sipping mango
lassis
. Whatever “brotherly” conversation had taken place during the previous hours, it apparently had gone off successfully. Sedgwick still hadn’t shaved, but he was again cloaked in his preferred “dramatis persona,” caustic wit sharpened and at the ready.

“God almighty, McBride. Are you ever going to get rid of that damned cough?”

“I’ll keep you posted.” Conor kicked the agent’s feet aside so he could more easily access the sofa. “I was fine until I got locked in the archbishop’s bloody icebox of a car.”

“Have the other
lassi
.” Thomas indicated the extra glass on the coffee table. “Maybe it’ll help.”

“It won’t,” Conor assured him but reached for the glass as he sat down. “It has to taste like shite, or it isn’t any use. Kavita will be here any minute with my evening shot of floor polish, so we’ll all get some relief soon. How’s everything coming along on this end?”

His eyes shot a question at Thomas over the rim of the glass, and his brother twitched a brief smile in response. “Oh, grand altogether. How about for you?”

“Yeah, fine. Sort of. It’ll be fine.”

He finished the sweetened yogurt drink, put the glass on the table, and coughed. “Told you.” Conor shrugged apologetically as Kavita sailed in with resolute purpose.

“Not a moment too soon,
ji
,” Sedgwick remarked. “I was ready to kick him and his moth-eaten lungs out the back door. I guess this means lights out for you, pal.”

“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, pal,” Conor said. He winked at Kavita and shuddered in swallowing the dose. “Brand new recipe, same unparalleled flavor. I can go all night, if that’s what it takes.”

Taking the empty glass, she smiled in approval and gave Sedgwick a subtle gesture of command as she left the room. Conor settled back on the sofa, regarding him with relaxed expectation. “Will it take all night, do you think? I’m ready when you are, so tell me a story.”