The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence (40 page)

“Are you hit?” Conor shouted over the sputtering gunfire. Sedgwick’s face had gone alarmingly white. He shook his head.

“Shoulder, dislocated.”

“Shit. What do you want me to do?”

“I’ll get it back in; I’ve done it before.” Sedgwick clenched his jaw. “Just hunker down for a minute. We caught a break. At least one of these guys is a knuckle-dragger. He’s going to empty that big banana clip and hit nothing but this freakin’ boulder.”

Conor hunkered down as instructed, and the siege continued. Bullets cracked against the stone and sheared large chunks of wood from the trees around them, filling the air with the pungent scent of pine pitch. Next to him, Sedgwick settled his back against the boulder. With a half-suppressed groan, he torqued his right arm at an angle away from his body, pushing slowly until the joint popped back into place. He slumped forward in relief, but his head came up at a sudden pause in the gunfire and the sound of a metallic snap.

“That’s one clip empty,” he said. “Take a few shots while they’re distracted.”

Snaking his arm and one eye around the side of the boulder, Conor began firing. The response was another immediate fusillade, and he pulled back behind the rock.

“They got a little closer, almost as far as the shrine, but I think I just winged one of them. How’s the shoulder?”

Sedgwick gingerly flexed the fingers of his right hand. “Fingers are still numb. Should be okay before long. Anyway, the stupid bastards are going to run out of ammunition. Just put out more defensive fire and wait them out.”

“We don’t have time to wait,” Conor fumed. “Believe me, I wish I had something else to offer.”

Conor’s fingers drummed against his knee. The Russians kept firing. It was methodical, deafening, and maddening. He wondered if their strategy was perhaps more clever than Sedgwick credited. Every ticking minute brought his brother a step closer to death, and he felt like he was losing his mind. What was happening down on the road? Was Thomas unconscious? Dead already? Or maybe he had heard the gunfight and was even now trying to crawl up the trail, in search of them?

Oh, Jesus.

The compulsion to move, to leap up and out into the open was wildly irrational but impossible to resist.

“Look,” he said, turning to Sedgwick. “There’s a big tree just there across the path. If you cover me, I’ll run across, and at least we’ll have a couple of angles—”

“Settle down,” Sedgwick ordered. His voice rang with authority, but he regarded Conor with apprehension. “I can’t even hold my gun yet. You’re going to have to wait.”

“There’s no time, for fuck’s sake! I can’t wait! I have to go!” With that, the secured door in his head gave way, and
 
the darkness that spilled out swept everything before it—all his reason, all his wiser instincts, all his celebrated talent for repose. At the same instant, there was another pause in the shooting. Again, he heard the sound of something hitting the ground with a metallic jingle, followed by a shout of surprise. Without giving himself the chance to think better of it, Conor let a cresting wave of adrenalin carry him forward.

He surged up and away from their hiding place, already firing before he’d cleared the edge of the boulder and before he could even see what he was shooting at. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sedgwick rise with a roar of alarm and awkwardly shift his gun to his left hand to provide covering fire. The shots from the opposite direction began again as the Russians adjusted their aim.

At first, an unnatural clarity flooded through him as he moved, bringing every sight, smell, and sound into sharp focus. An instant later, it was over, and the phenomenon had already reversed itself. A disorienting fog smothered the heightened awareness and dampened even ordinary sensation. He stumbled in confusion, ears ringing. Something was wrong with his eyes. As though trying to see underwater, he crept a few paces forward on the path, peering at the two Russians on the ground in the distance. They’d fallen in a tangle of limbs, mimicking the innocent sleep of lovers. More jarring than this was the thing on the ground in the middle distance. It hadn’t been there earlier. It looked like a bundle of red and white cloth.

“McBride, are you all right? Can you hear me? Conor.” Feeling the grip on his arms, he took his eyes from the odd-looking bundle to look at Sedgwick.
 

“It wasn’t there before.” He feebly gestured up the trail. “What is it? Where did it come from?”

The agent took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut. “Wait here.” Sedgwick began running up the trail, but after a half-dozen steps stopped and spun around to stare back at him.

It began with a low moan, but as Conor’s legs folded, it swelled into toneless keening, a primitive sound exhumed from a lightless place. The protective fog had evaporated. He could see it plainly now, as he had seen it only seconds earlier, a fleeting glimpse of thin limbs sprinting across the trail, of a small carved deity falling to the ground, of a young face turned toward him in astonishment.

It was not a bundle of red-and-white cloth. It was a white Pashmina scarf, soaked in blood.

38

T
HE
TABLES
HAD
TURNED
SO
QUICKLY
,
IN
THE
SPACE
OF
A
few minutes. It was Sedgwick now urging him to get up to start moving before more time was lost, but Conor couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get off his knees. Couldn’t even uncurl himself enough to lift his head. He rocked forward, his face inches from the ground, begging for the mercy of a swift, just punishment, knowing it wouldn’t come.

It wouldn’t come because mercy was what he deserved least. The sacrifice of an eye for an eye was one God apparently had no intention of accepting. Why else was he kneeling there, physically unscathed when he should be riddled with bullets?

Abruptly, Sedgwick heaved him upright and delivered a hard slap against his face. “Goddammit, Conor, snap out of it. Get on your feet and get moving.”

Absently touching his cheek, Conor rose and looked at the trail above them. Sedgwick had rearranged the bloodstained scarf to give the child’s body the dignity of resembling what it was—a fragile shroud-wrapped scrap of humanity, waiting for its final journey.

“We’ve got to do something.” His voice shook. “We can’t leave him here.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Sedgwick said quietly, but Conor continued in a burst of manic chatter. “Listen to me. I’ll take him. Put him in the SUV. I’ll take him to Srinagar, and—”

“Buddy, you listen to me.” Sedgwick took Conor’s head in both his hands and held it in a tight grip. “You can’t take him anywhere. He belongs here. He probably lives . . . lived, nearby. There’s a settlement we drove by a few kilometers down, at the bottom of the hill. I’m guessing that must be where his family is.”

“Jesus.” Conor stiffened his legs to keep them from buckling again.

“I said I’ll take care of it,” Sedgwick continued. “I promise you, I will. There’s nothing you can do for him, but your brother is bleeding to death at the bottom of this hill, and there’s something you can still do about that. You have to go. Now.”

“Yes. All right,” Conor said dully.

As Sedgwick released the viselike grip on his head and stepped back, he looked down to see his fingers still wrapped around the Walther as though glued to it. Holding it by the muzzle, he offered the butt to Sedgwick, who refused it with a shake of his head.

“You can’t. Not yet.”

Without protest, he tucked the gun behind his back, under his belt.

“It wasn’t just you,” Sedgwick added. He lifted an arm, gesturing toward the small body, and let it fall to his side again. “You could tell by the . . . well, you could just tell. He must have been hiding behind the shrine and just darted across the path before any of us could see. I don’t know what he was thinking. Maybe he thought he needed to save the idol. What I’m trying to say is, you’re not alone in this. It was me, too. It was all of us.”

“Yes, all right,” Conor repeated, eyes down.

In their convoluted history together, it was the most generous gesture this troubled, complicated man had ever offered him. He didn’t have the heart to tell him how little it mattered. In at least one respect, guilt had something in common with love—it could be endlessly shared without depleting what remained in its owner’s soul.

He offered a final salute and hurried down the trail.

T
HOMAS
WAS
SLEEPING
when he reached the car but stirred as he opened the rear door to check on him.

“What’s been happening?” he asked groggily, eyes still shut.

Conor rested his forehead against the doorjamb and closed his own eyes for a few seconds before straightening with artificial briskness. “How’s the pain patch holding up?” He hoped the non sequitur would go unnoticed and that Thomas would not look at him for a while longer. “Will I just give you one for the road? So you don’t feel it as much?”

He reached for the medical kit, averting his face as Thomas opened his eyes and smiled at him. “As yer man said, ‘bird never flew on one wing.’ Lay it on, so.”

Almost immediately, he was asleep again, and Conor began easing the SUV down the road toward the meadow. After driving several kilometers, the settlement Sedgwick had mentioned came into view at the bottom of the hill. Several blue-painted cement structures with corrugated roofs were scattered throughout the compound, which had been swept clear of snow down to bare earth. Clearly, the sound of gunfire had not reached this far down the mountain. A group of children were in the open area, kicking around a ball made of plastic bags. On a low wall near the road, a woman in a thick, fawn-colored
salwar kameez
sat stripping the smaller branches from tree limbs, dropping them onto a pile near her feet. She was young, but old enough to be the mother of a ten-year-old.

As the vehicle approached, she looked up. With a toss of her head, she flicked a strand of dark hair from her face and met his eyes with frank curiosity. He looked away, throat closing, and pumped the accelerator to send the SUV shooting down the hill.

As soon as the settlement had disappeared from the rearview mirror, he pulled over and fell out of the car, hanging onto the door as bile rose from his stomach in convulsive heaves. A minute later, he dragged himself back behind the wheel and started forward again. Sweat soaked into his shirt, and he shivered as it cooled and dried there. A skewering pain throbbed between his shoulder blades, and his lungs kept up their low-registered drone. He noted each symptom with apathy. None of it mattered.

There was only one route out of Gulmarg, at least by car. He circled the perimeter of the meadow and navigated the precipitous descent, creeping along the same switchback road they had climbed less than twenty-four hours earlier. It gradually began leveling off, and he allowed his white- knuckled grip to relax. The moment of relief was short-lived.

A disturbance appeared in the distance, coming into focus as he moved closer to it. The road was crowded with vehicles, all of them parked in front of a manmade barrier.

“Fuck.” Conor slammed the heel of his hand against the gearshift.

The barrier looked hastily assembled, no more than a collection of large rocks strewn across the road. A group of seven uniformed men were milling in front of it, and as he maneuvered forward, one of them rushed up with a peremptory shout of authority.

“Sir. You must remain here. The way ahead is blocked.”

“I have a sick man with me. I need to get to Srinagar and get him to a hospital.”

In desperation, he reached into the glove box for the official authorization document Walker had presented at the checkpoint the previous evening. He smoothed out the wrinkled stamps and presented it, along with a solemn pronouncement in Hindi.

“We are on special assignment with the Criminal Investigations Division.”

“
Accha
?” The man’s eyebrows shot up as he took the document. He examined it with interest but then angled his head, frowning with regret. “Very sorry, sir, but not going down this route. Rock fall is there. The way is closed for next few hours. You must reverse and go to the turning on the left, some three kilometers back. It is trekking route and cart road network connecting to Srinagar via Wadwan. By-and-by, you may reach.”

“How long is ‘by-and-by’?”

“Perhaps three hours. Perhaps more.”

Conor expelled a bark of laughter that came close to spiraling out of control before he managed to swallow it and turn the SUV back in the direction they’d just come. He stared ahead, and with a whisper, surrendered to a power he couldn’t compete with or understand.

“Why do you want him so badly?”

He got no answer. And wasn’t sure who he was asking.

A
LTHOUGH
NOT
AS
bad as he’d feared the trekking route was bad enough. It began with another descent, winding around gullies of snowmelt that drained to a riverbed at the bottom of the valley. Alternately cratered and bulging with half- submerged boulders, the trail was at times a notional thing. Occasionally it disappeared altogether, and he drove in a more or less straight line until he found it again. At other times, a crosshatched pattern of intersections forced a choice among too many options.

As long as daylight held, he felt tentatively confident in his decisions. Although the landscape was dry and featureless, it was occasionally interrupted by small settlements, and his sense of direction remained strong; but if the guard’s judgment had been accurate, darkness would overtake them before they reconnected with the main road. He felt far less optimistic about his ability to navigate by the night sky.

Thomas woke at the beginning of the detour. Conor winced at his occasional gasps as the vehicle lurched from one obstacle to the next, but although he begged him to accept further applications of the morphine patch, his brother stubbornly refused. He tolerated the ride for almost two hours, but at a little after six o’clock, as daylight began rapidly seeping away, he summoned the strength to deliver an order that brooked no argument.