Read Online The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence by Kathryn Guare - Free Book Online Page B

you’d gone with a more orthodox plan?”
    “No, no, not at all.”
    “Yeah, ‘not at all.’ You said that already.” Conor scowled. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Here’s your newly minted agent cheerfully preparing to head out for crown and country, and there’s you looking like the eve of the apocalypse. Not much of a send-off, and it’s giving me a peculiar feeling.”
    Frank stood looking down at his fingers as they drummed against the back of the chair. Conor groaned in exasperation.
    “Will you ever just give over, for Jesus’ sake? Why am I always needing to winch it out of you? It’s a little late to be saying it, but if you think I can’t do this—”
    “That is not what I was thinking. Not. At. All.” Frank tapped the chair for emphasis and appeared to reach a decision. He sat down once more and faced Conor. “There is a complication with this operation that I did not anticipate. I am irritated with myself for not anticipating it, and more important, I am troubled by the possibility it will make your task more difficult and more dangerous than it already is.”
    “More difficult. More dangerous. Grand.”
    It was an uncomfortable piece of news, but notwithstanding the sincerity of Frank’s concern, he received it with ironic amusement. More dangerous compared to what, after all? Nothing in his life experience could serve as a yardstick for whatever he was about to begin, so what capacity did he have for measuring the degrees of difference?
    “You’ll have seen in your brief,” Frank continued, “that upon arrival in Mumbai, you are to rendezvous with the agent who will serve as your controlling officer in country.”
    “Curtis Sedgwick, thirty-six, American, blond hair, thin, medium height,” Conor recited. “I’m to hang about outside the arrivals hall and let him find me.”
    “Correct.”
    “I was surprised. Didn’t realize you hired Americans.”
    “I was surprised as well,” Frank muttered. “Unpleasantly so. I’m familiar with Curtis Sedgwick, or more accurately, with his reputation. He is not an official member of the service. He works as a ‘NOC’—a nonofficial cover agent—in the South Asian sector, with mixed results, I might add.”
    “So, not one of your favorites,” Conor said drily. “What sort of repu—”
    “His performance is spotty, his habits are detestably foul, and his lifestyle exposes him to unacceptable levels of risk. When he is not on assignment—but for all we know, even when he is on assignment—he carries on a number of sordid commercial enterprises, some of which are criminal. He is exactly the sort of questionable asset that inevitably ends with the service writhing in embarrassment.”
    Conor felt his stoicism giving way to a twinge of alarm. “Criminal in what sense of the word?”
    “In the most literal sense of the word,” Frank snarled. “Among other things, he is a small-time drug dealer, and if reports are accurate, an addict.”
    “An addict?”
    “To be more precise, a heroin addict.”
    “A heroin addict! Are you having me on, Frank?” For a long moment, he stared in speechless disbelief. Then, with a surge of incredulous rage, he exploded. “A fucking heroin addict? What kind of bullshit is this? I’ve signed papers that promise to string me up if I even think about straying from the straight and narrow. I even had to read a handbook on deportment, for God’s sake, and now you’re telling me that my supervisor, my guide, my all-important in-country controlling officer, is some drug-dealing junkie?”
    “I learned only this afternoon that he had been engaged for the operation,” Frank said.
    “And what are you going to do about it, then? Oh, no you don’t,” Conor hissed, seeing a familiar guardedness beginning to form in Frank’s eyes. “Don’t you give me some secret agent bollocks and tell me you can’t do anything, because I’m not having it. You’d better pull your socks up and do something