The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence (33 page)

He smiled. Kavita’s sentence structures routinely wandered beyond accepted rules of English idiom, but he wasn’t sure it was accidental. Her poetic phrasing often evoked deeper truths, and this was a case in point.

Rishikesh had indeed been “good to” him. The antibiotics deserved some credit, as did Kavita’s prepared concoctions, but the ashram and its surrounding community had a living, purposeful quality that had achieved the effect of a wholesale transfusion. After only a week, every ounce of anything tired and sickly had been siphoned out, replaced with the fortifying mixture of nature and spirit that permeated the atmosphere around him.

That afternoon he had tested his growing stamina with a long walk near Lakshman Jhula, one of two pedestrian bridges that spanned the Ganges, connecting the city center to its east bank where most of the ashrams were concentrated. That his ramble had obscured the day’s more serious business was a tribute to the east bank’s peaceful, otherworldly ambiance. That Kavita knew about the excursion was an added surprise.

“How did you know where I went?” he asked.

“Prateek was here.” The twinkle in her eyes belied her neutral tone. “Complaining that you prefer trekking to his yoga instruction.”

“Hmm. Right. Prateek.” His nose wrinkled in distaste. He’d had no great desire for such instruction to begin with, and the mandated lessons with Prateek the “uber-yogi” had done nothing to change his mind. He found him an intimidating, overpowering presence, and his demonstrations of
pranayama
—the ritualized breathing exercises central to yogic practice—left Conor both spellbound and faintly nauseated. During exhalation, the sixty-year-old master could draw his abdomen into such a state of concave extremity that one half-expected an imprint of the man’s spine to appear on his stomach.

“I guess I did scarper a bit early on him. He’s just too much yogi for me, I think.”

“Come, sit.” Kavita patted the floor next to her. “We will practice
pranayama
together, you and I.”

“Oh . . . ehm.”

“Yes, come, come. You must learn to breathe properly.”
 

“He can learn how to breathe later, Kavita,” Sedgwick’s voice called from the dining room. “McBride, get your butt in here.”

Caught halfway between sitting and standing, he offered an insincere pout of apology and then spun in his tracks and hurried to the dining room.

“Nice of you to find time for us in your busy schedule,” Sedgwick said.

Conor joined them at the table, and now all three of them sat facing the laptop, like petitioners before an oracle. He raised an eyebrow at Thomas. “What have I missed?”

“Exactly nothing,” Thomas said. “We’re waiting for the bloody power to come back.”

“What about the BGAN?” Conor asked. “Couldn’t we try that? Nice to get some use from it after hauling it all the way over here.”

“Shit, I forgot you had it.” Sedgwick’s eyes widened hopefully.

“What’s a bee-gan?” Thomas asked.

“Broadband Global Area Network,” Conor replied. “Fancy yoke that connects a laptop to the Internet via satellite link. I don’t even know if it works or not.”

“Get it and let’s try,” Sedgwick said. “We can set it up out in the garden. Bring your laptop, too. The battery is dead in this one.”

He retrieved the BGAN from his room, and a few minutes later they were sitting on the ground in Kavita’s Ayurvedic medicine garden examining it. The equipment was remarkably compact—a white, rectangular panel slightly larger than the laptop and a single connecting cable. When the rapid beep of the terminal indicated a successful link to the satellite, he switched on the laptop. After a moment, an intricate, horizontal tree diagram appeared on the screen.

“What the hell is that?” Thomas asked, leaning in for a closer look.

“The log-in screen,” Conor sighed. “I’d forgotten about it. There’s a nine-character password entry for each line of the diagram.”

Sedgwick gave an incredulous snort. “There’s got to be at least twenty lines. There’s no freaking way you remember the password for every one of them.”

Without responding, Conor began tapping on the keys, humming to himself and occasionally lifting a hand to let his fingers wiggle above the keyboard. As the lines filled up, Sedgwick’s smirk faded.

“It’s a musical password.” Delighted, Thomas bounced a fist against his knee.

Conor nodded. “It’s a good chunk from the staccato jig section of the Korngold concerto. I’m a bit rusty. Let’s see if I played it right.”

He hit Enter and grimaced as the screen went black. A second later it lit up again, icons popping up as it whirred to life. Another few strokes established the Internet connection, and he handed the laptop over to Thomas.

“All yours,” he said. “Go get the mail, and I’ll get us a snack.”

When he returned with a bowl of fruit a few minutes later, the mood had darkened. Sedgwick was on his feet pacing the garden, while Thomas remained seated on the ground frowning pensively.

“It doesn’t make any goddamn sense,” Sedgwick fumed. “Look through it again. Does it read like they’re afraid of a trap? Why would they be suspicious now?”

“Maybe because it
is
a trap?” Thomas said,
sotto voce
. He pulled the laptop closer and silently read the message again.

“More issues?” Conor asked, lowering himself to the ground.

“You might say that, yeah. Change of venue.” Thomas gave him a sidelong glance and looked up at Sedgwick. “I don’t know, it looks pretty straightforward. He doesn’t want to sully the holiness of the ashram by doing business here.”

“Oh, for . . . they’ve been doing business here for the past five years!” Sedgwick squawked.

“Dragonov hasn’t,” Thomas replied.

“What about Conor?” Sedgwick demanded. “Are you sure they’re not nervous about him?”

“Doesn’t sound like it. They’re congratulating me for expanding business inside the family, looking forward to meeting him, and seeing me. And why wouldn’t they?” Thomas added, still staring at the screen. “I’ve been a good customer all these years. They trust me, poor bastards. They’re fine with everything except the location.”

He turned back to Conor. “They’re saying Dragonov wants us to meet him in Gulmarg a week from today. We’ll take care of business, and then he’ll fly us all down to the airport in Dehra Dun, and we’ll drive over here.”

“Where’s Gulmarg? Far away?”

“Far enough,” Thomas said. “It’s in Jammu-Kashmir, about eight hundred kilometers north of here, a little west of Srinagar. It’s a ski resort.”

“A ski resort, in India? No shit?”

“Yeah, yeah. Up and coming destination. They’re trying to make it the Aspen of the East.”

“Can we stay focused on the problem here, please?” Sedgwick snarled. “Why Gulmarg? What the fuck is in Gulmarg? He likes to ski?”

“I think he’s got some investment property there, actually,” Thomas said. “I remember his lads mentioning it a while back. Said they were heading up there after our meeting.”

Sedgwick rounded on him with an accusatory glare. “You never mentioned that. Seems like it would have been a good piece of news to share, don’t you think?”

Thomas flushed angrily. “We talked all kinds of shite. It didn’t matter until now, did it? Why would I care where they feck off to once I was done with them? Why would you?”

“All right. Hang on a minute.” Conor put a hand on his brother’s arm. “We’re not on to a productive line of discussion with this.”

“You’ve got something brilliant to suggest, I suppose?” Sedgwick jeered.

“I do, yeah,” he replied drily. “I suggest you stop stomping about, blattering like a six year old, and I suggest we consider the options. Sounds to me like there are two: either we tell them to feck off and call it a day, or we hump it up to Gulmarg. I doubt your man Walker is much interested in the first. So unless there’s an alternative I’m not seeing, we might as well talk about the second. Tell me if I’m missing something here, Agent Sedgwick. Do we have a choice?”

Sedgwick continued stalking the garden for another minute before coming to a stop in front of them. Locking his fingers together, he placed both hands on top of his head and released a sigh of defeat.

“You’re not missing anything. Too much is invested to pull back now. It just got a lot more complicated and a lot more dangerous, but we’re taking this guy down, so it looks like we’ll be humping it up to Gulmarg to do it.”

32

D
URING
DAYLIGHT
HOURS
,
THE
TEMPERATURE
IN
R
ISHIKESH
ROSE
quickly, achieving a deliciously even, therapeutic warmth by mid-afternoon, but the air often grew damp and chilly once the sun disappeared, and it had been dark for over an hour.

Without taking his eyes from the scene unfolding in front of him, Conor reached for the jacket he’d left lying on the steps. A gathering breeze—visible as an iridescent wrinkle sweeping across the water under the moonlight—gave the evening an extra bite. It fluttered the orange robes of a priest who was descending the steps of the ghat, accompanied by a young man cradling a bundle in his arms. They were about to perform
sanjayama
, the ritual immersion of ashes that was part of Hindu funeral rites.

Conor shivered as he pulled on the jacket. He was out of practice with cooler temperatures after several months in the humid soup of Mumbai. Apparently, it was even colder farther north. Reports indicated winter held a firm grip on the region they would be heading for in the morning.

He and Thomas had come to the ghat that evening to escape their pre-departure anxieties, leaving Sedgwick to contend with the manic demands of Walker and Costino. The two DEA agents had arrived earlier in the week. After three exhausting days of role-playing and worst-case scenario spinning, Conor thought the preparations had moved into a counterproductive phase of obsessive-compulsive repetition.

At the first opportunity, he and his brother fled the premises, joining the throngs of pilgrims and tourists flocking to the Ganges for
aarti
. The ceremony took place each evening on the wide, marble ghat of Parmarth Niketan, one of the oldest and largest ashrams in Rishikesh.

The boisterous, jubilant service of music, song, and fire had ended now, and the crowds had dispersed, but the two of them continued to sit in the darkness, reluctant to return to a world so far removed from the joyful pageantry they’d just witnessed.

“I’ve often wondered what happens to them,” Thomas said.
 

“You have?” Jerking his gaze from the priest’s slow, stylized movements, Conor gave Thomas a glance of surprise. His brother did not often indulge in the contemplation of metaphysical mysteries. “The dead, you mean? What happens to their souls and . . . like that?”

“The dead!” Thomas’s forehead puckered in consternation, and he gave a hoot of laughter. “I’m not talking about the dead, you eejit. I’m talking about those things.”

He pointed down at the river’s edge where a boat-like basket of flowers with a small, guttering flame at its center bobbed on the water. It was one of many that worshippers had launched onto the river during the evening ceremony—a prayer of light offered to Mother Ganga, in thanks for her divine, eternal light. The basket had become trapped between two rocks.

“I was just wondering how far they get,” Thomas explained. “Do they wash up on the beach farther down? Or maybe there’s some special
wallah
who goes down to catch them, so they can use them again?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. There’s a job for everyone in India.”

Conor smiled, charmed by the imagery of someone stationed downstream, patiently waiting to catch the prayers of the faithful. Now that he’d seen it, the shipwrecked boat of marigolds troubled him. Impulsively, he jumped up and ran lightly down the stairs. Bracing one hand against a rock, he plucked the basket from the water and put it down again in the free-flowing current. As he climbed back up the stairs, even in the darkness, he could see Thomas grinning at him.

“Laugh if you want.” Conor gave a self-conscious shrug. “It’s a prayer. It shouldn’t get stuck there.”

“I wasn’t laughing,” Thomas assured him, gently. “I was just thinking you’re so much like Ma—in a good way. I’m even a bit more like her than I used to be. I’ve been up here a lot over the years. I’ve spent hours sitting right here, staring at the river. There’s something about it, isn’t there? It pulls at you, no matter where you are, even when you can’t see it. Gets under your skin, somehow, and you find yourself wanting to get back to it. Know what I mean?”

“I do.”

Caol áit
.

After a moment Conor added softly, “She’d be proud of you, Thomas. She never stopped believing in you.”

“Ah, Jaysus, don’t. Please.” The protest came out as a thin, strangled whisper.

“All right, I won’t, but it’s true all the same. She never did. Not once.”

They stayed out for as long as they dared, like truant schoolboys, but at last they shuffled back to the ashram. When they slunk back into the conference room Walker had appropriated for their planning sessions, Sedgwick glanced up from a map he’d been studying, looking too tired to be angry with them.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming back at all.” He leaned back with a yawn and pushed a handful of hair from his forehead.

“Sorry to be gone so long.” Thomas gave his shoulder a friendly squeeze. “You look like hell, incidentally. Are you ever going to bed, at all?

“Walker wants to do one more run-through,” Sedgwick said dispiritedly. “By the time we get to Gulmarg, we’ll be so over-rehearsed, it will be a miracle if they don’t see through it.”

“Where is Walker?” Conor asked.

“He’s . . . ” Sedgwick twirled a hand wearily at the door as it opened with a bang. Walker strode in with a brisk, powerful stride. Seeing Conor and Thomas, he stopped and glared at them.

“Where the hell have you been for the past two hours?” “We needed a bit of a break,” Thomas replied. “We took a walk down to the ghat for the
aarti
.”