The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence (10 page)

When his shouts produced no effect, he turned his agitation on Parvati. It took several minutes of disjointed commentary, with a number of other passengers chiming in, before he understood the nature of his benign captivity.

From her mobile phone, Parvati had already telephoned Kavita’s doctor, who had urged them to get her to the Kotwal’s flat in Mahim, a neighborhood of Mumbai, as soon as possible. On top of that, although he was offered forceful reassurances, his fellow travelers could not pinpoint the exact location of his bags. It would take some time to discover where they had been stowed, and if they had to pull over and search . . .

“Okay, okay.
thik hai
, I get it.” Conor sighed in acquiescence. “We’re going to Mahim.”

“
Accha
.”

This most versatile Indian word—used to signal agreement, understanding, skepticism, surprise, or general goodwill—echoed throughout the coach in a chorus.

After driving through surprisingly crowded streets, the coach pulled into the covered parking area of a nondescript apartment building in Mahim. A scene of fresh confusion erupted as a small welcome party of household staff climbed aboard to lend assistance, presenting an improvised stretcher. With a burst of irritation, Conor flatly refused to surrender Kavita to the rickety pallet. He astonished even himself with the colorful Hindi-English directives he employed to clear the aisle so he could carry her out and up to the flat.

Bending to lift her, he was surprised to see Kavita regarding him with a devilish glint in her eyes.

“Hindi is improving rapidly, Con,” she whispered, breathlessly. “Welcome to India, land of surprises.”

He couldn’t resist smiling as he tucked her shawl around her shoulders.

“Is that the official motto?”

“No,” Kavita responded with a wheezy laugh. “Not really.”
 

“Well, write someone a letter, Kavita-ji,” he said, gathering her up into his arms. “Sure it sounds like a winner to me.” After laying Kavita down in her bedroom, Conor was led to the head of the dining table as the “most welcome, most honored guest,” and the family members began feeding him. Moments later, he was further rewarded by the nearly miraculous reappearance of his luggage.

Stupefied by food, weariness, and bemusement at the slapstick nature of his predicament, he fingered the mobile phone in his pocket, unsure of his next move. He knew Curtis Sedgwick had a similar, MI6-issued phone. He had the number for it but had been instructed to dial it only in instances of extreme emergency. The current situation seemed to qualify, but he continued to stall, postponing the humiliation of trying to explain the mess he’d landed in within minutes of arriving in the country.

He also found it interesting that his controlling officer had not phoned him. It could mean Sedgwick did not yet find the circumstances worthy of extreme measures. In his jet-lagged mind, the ongoing silence between them felt like a game of chicken. If he phoned first, would he be reprimanded? Called out as a hopeless amateur?

“Who are you kidding?” a voice whispered in his head. “You are an amateur, but that’s not your feckin’ fault.”

Careful to avoid drawing attention, Conor slipped from the table and stepped onto the balcony of the flat. He dialed the memorized number, and the call went directly to an automated voicemail greeting. He hung up immediately. Voicemail messages were forbidden under all circumstances. Even if they weren’t, what the hell would he say? That an Indian wedding party had kidnapped him at the airport?

He lifted his head to gaze around the wide balcony and absently slapped the phone against his thigh. For the first time his senses began to register the exotic, heady atmosphere of Mumbai. The flat was on the third floor, but this exterior space was not constructed for viewing. A cement wall, too high to see over, surrounded it on all sides, so his impression of the city below was formed by the smells and sounds wafting up from the street.

There was plenty to hear in the air around and below him, but the odors most insistently demanded his attention. There were layers upon layers of them, all present at once but individually distinct. They shifted in strength and character with the ocean breeze that blew soft, irregular gusts across his face. First came the sharp tang of engine fuel mingled with an even more acrid burning smell, as though something unnatural had been set alight to blanket the city with a smoldering stench. A shift in the air’s direction brought a fresher aroma of salt and brine floating in from the sea. It gave way to the hot smell of spices frying in oil, which in turn incongruously merged with the subtle reek of garbage.

Underlying all these was a consistent undercurrent resembling a scent he had known most of his life. Familiar enough to farmers, but no longer to the inhabitants of developed world cities with robust sanitation systems, it was the dark, organic odor of waste, both human and animal. Back home, it signified a freshly fertilized pasture; here it was the defining smell of a densely packed and largely impoverished humanity. It was repellent in theory, and yet the sensory experience of it was fascinating.

“
Arrey
, here he is!”

He turned at the exclamation and saw Parvati approaching across the balcony.

“I was afraid we were losing you,” she explained, waving a hand at him with theatrical exasperation. “Maybe you were sneaking away to find the greeter friend at Mumbai airport. But see, no need for airport now; the friend has found you.”

Conor looked past Parvati in the darkness and saw a figure in the doorway silhouetted against the light from the flat— thin, medium height, blond hair.

“The elusive Mr. Rafferty,” Curtis Sedgwick announced in a flat, Midwestern American accent. He held up a hand to display the faint green glow of a mobile phone screen.

“You rang?”

9

“S
O
, C
URTIS
…”

“Sedgwick. Just call me Sedgwick.”

“God help me, another one ,” Conor muttered , remembering his contentious exchanges with Lawrence Shelton. “So, Sedgwick. If you knew it was me calling, why didn’t you ring me back?”

He was following the agent through the covered parking area, and although the man was half a head shorter than he was, Conor was struggling to match his stride. The events of the past fourteen hours were beginning to wear on him. He stopped as they reached the street and tried to distribute the weight of his bags more evenly. Sedgwick stopped as well with an impatient sigh.

“I didn’t call because I was just a hundred yards down the street.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “I figured it would be quicker to come get you.”

“Why didn’t you come sooner?” Conor asked.

“Because I didn’t know what the hell you were up to, that’s why,” Sedgwick shot back with an amused scowl.

“And how did you know where I was?”

“Look, dude. Do you mind if we continue the introductory pleasantries in the car?”

Sedgwick flipped a set of keys from his pocket and pointed the entry remote down the street. A white SUV chirped in response, and he started walking toward it.

“You weren’t the only thing on my agenda tonight. I’m about three hours behind schedule.”

“Yeah, sure. Sorry.” Conor hoisted his bags and followed. He remained silent as they pulled onto the road, yielding the conversational lead to Sedgwick, who at first seemed disinclined to take it. The agent whistled under his breath as he manipulated the standard shift with playful aggression, sending the vehicle speeding up the street. Several times during the ride, Conor felt his core tighten and brace for a crash that looked impossible to avoid, but each time, a sliver of space would appear, and as the SUV shot forward to fill it, he would hear an emphatic whisper of triumph from the driver’s seat.

“Boom. Boom.”

He took the measure of the man sitting next to him through a series of furtive glances. Sedgwick looked to be in his mid thirties, and although his fine, ash-blond hair reached almost to his shoulders, he was otherwise fairly conventional and clean-cut in appearance. He had a sharp, angular face with thin, dark eyebrows and slate-gray eyes. He was dressed in jeans and a khaki shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and wore a scuffed pair of motorcycle boots. Most notably, he seemed to be in excellent physical shape. He wasn’t a bad- looking guy. He certainly didn’t look like a heroin addict.

As if reading his thoughts, Sedgwick took his eyes briefly from the road and glanced toward him. A sardonic grin deepened the vertical lines engraved on either side of his thin face.

“Sizing me up? How am I looking?”

Embarrassed at being pinned so easily, Conor looked away. “About how I expected,” he lied.

“Hmm, I’m sure,” Sedgwick drawled. His brow furrowed in irritation. “Why so quiet, chum? I thought you had a list of questions for me, although it seems like you have more explaining to do than me.”

“I suppose I do,” Conor agreed. An enormous, eye-watering yawn prevented further comment.

“I’ll cut you a break and start first,” Sedgwick said. “But don’t fall asleep. It’s not my fault you’ve got to report for yourself this soon.”

He shifted into a lower gear and pointed the car at the longest stretch of empty road Conor had seen so far.

“Here’s my end of it. I get to the airport a half hour before the plane lands. I see everyone from the flight walk out the door, and I miss you completely. Of course, I’m looking for a black-haired Irish guy wandering around by himself and am too preoccupied to notice the Good Samaritan carrying out a woman obscured by a posse. So kudos, if that was the plan— maybe everything they’re saying about you in Gosport is true.”
 

“It wasn’t part of the plan.” Conor looked curiously at Sedgwick’s profile. “What is it they’re saying about me in Gosport?”

Sedgwick dismissed the question with a quick shake of his head. “We’ll save that for later. Anyway, now I’m standing around at the airport, and I’ve got no black-haired Irish guy. I’m wondering if he missed the plane, if the MI-whatever boys back in England changed their minds, or if maybe the MI-whatever boys are just fucking with me, which wouldn’t be news. Then, I hear these two rickshaw drivers jawing away next to me and realize they are trying to figure out what the story is with that tall, dark-haired
gora
that carried Kavita Kotwal out of the airport. I whipped out the photo I had, and they confirmed it was you.”

He paused and looked over at Conor. “A
gora
is what Indians call a white guy.”

Conor nodded. “Right. I know.”

The agent held his gaze for several uncomfortable seconds before switching his eyes back to the road. “Good for you,” he murmured. “Straight A student.”

They rode on without speaking for several blocks before Conor broke the silence. “So you knew I left with Kavita Kotwal, but how did you know where she lives?”

Sedgwick gave an incredulous snort. “Come on, everyone knows where Kavita Kotwal lives.” Seeing Conor’s obvious confusion, Sedgwick’s eyes narrowed. With a quick twist of the wheel, he pulled the SUV over to the side of the road, cut the engine, and swiveled around to challenge him squarely. “What are you up to, McBride? Are you seriously trying to tell me you don’t know who Kavita Kotwal is?”

“Rafferty,” he corrected.

“Rafferty, McBride—nobody gives a shit. Answer the question.”

“Well.” Conor took a deep breath. “I guess I know her now—a little—but I didn’t know her at all until she sat next to me on the plane.”

“She sat next to you on the plane, purely by coincidence, and that was the first you’d ever heard of her? Is that what you’re telling me?” Sedgwick leaned forward to get a better angle at his face. “Is it? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“That’s what I’m telling you, yes,” Conor said, irritably. “For God’s sake, it’s my first time in India, and I’ve been here a total of four hours. I haven’t had much chance to make friends. What am I missing? She’s somebody famous, is she?”

“Yeah, yeah, somebody famous.” Sedgwick ran a hand through his hair and shook his head with a sigh. “What are the odds? Unbelievable.” He reached into his shirt pocket to pull out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to Conor. “Your turn now. I think we could use a smoke for this one.”

“Too bloody right.”

Conor lit up, and after a deep, fortifying drag, launched into the confession of how he had managed to botch the first and easiest stage of his assignment. Considering how many hours it had consumed, the story was depressingly quick to recount. When he finished, flicking a chagrined glance at his companion, Sedgwick responded with a merciless shout of laughter and reached for the ignition switch.

“I’m beginning to like you more than I thought I would, McBride—oh, sorry. Rafferty.”

Conor wasn’t sure he could say the same, but swallowed his annoyance and returned to the question he’d asked earlier. “Who is she, then? You say everybody knows her and where she lives. She’s some kind of celebrity, or what?”

Sedgwick gave the SUV a burst of acceleration as they rejoined the flow of traffic and continued driving south, with the inky, dark water of Mahim Bay occasionally appearing on their right. “She’s famous for a few reasons. The newspapers call her the Mother Theresa of Mumbai, and at this end of the city, she’s known as the Devi of Dharavi. That’s one of the biggest slums in Mumbai, maybe as many as a million people living in it. You probably drove by it on your way from the airport. It’s right next to her neighborhood.”

Conor shook his head. “I didn’t notice. I was . . . a bit distracted.”

“No doubt.” Sedgwick smirked. “Well, Kavita spends a lot of time there. She’s pretty much dedicated her life to working with the slum dwellers of Dharavi, and let me tell you, she’s a real force to be reckoned with. When the UNICEF team showed up at Dharavi with the polio vaccine, they couldn’t get anywhere until they started working with her.”

Although surprised, he didn’t find it very hard to picture the tiny woman he’d carried in his arms commanding a group of UN health workers. There was something decidedly intense and purposeful about her. “How did she get to be so powerful?” he asked.