The Secret Chord: The Virtuosic Spy - Book 2 (39 page)

"Kate, I don't know how you'll feel about it but I think I can use this. In fact, I think I might need to."

Her muscles tensed, but then she looked up at him, eyes narrowed. "Good."

T
HE
NEXT
BREAK
they got was the discovery of six signal flares, hidden by a pile of life preservers under the bench. Conor waited until they'd drawn closer to where Durgan would anchor the ferry off-shore, and then sent all six blasting up into the night—a beautifully choreographed maneuver with Kate serving as assistant gunner, ready to lob him a new shell as soon as he called for one. They ran through all of them in fifteen seconds while Durgan was still fumbling to unlock the wheelhouse door.

Once out, he charged across the deck, chambering a round and pointing the gun at Conor's chest. With the six beacons trailing fire and hanging overhead like bright red stars, Conor dropped the last empty shell and raised his hands in surrender, maintaining the glacial calm that always centered him at such moments.

"Blood all over the ferry, boss? Is that what you want? Now you've a bit less time than you thought, it's maybe not the smartest move—to start improvising. Also, you may want to go sort the steering. We're headed for quite a big rock, there."

Spewing obscenities and rage, Durgan ran back inside to correct course, and ten minutes later he dropped anchor near a sheltered cove—the landing spot for generations of Blasket Islanders. Once on shore, Conor and Kate started up the path while Durgan followed behind with a flashlight in one hand and his gun in the other.
 

Even steeper than the ramp at Dunquin, the path was an assortment of slick stones with tufts of wet grass growing around their edges. Conor knew the way. He'd walked this route with his mother many times, at all ages, in sun and rain. When they reached the top of the bluff, he turned automatically to the right, toward the sad, deserted village. The oldest of the stone houses were in an advanced state of ruin, their roofs long since torn off by North Atlantic storms. A collection of newer houses farther up the hill survived in better condition. Built to face the mainland, their whitewashed walls were just visible in the darkness. Conor thought Durgan probably had one of those houses in mind for Kate.

Far ahead and below them, he heard the muffled crash of waves on the White Strand, a long wide beach he'd often seen crowded with sunbathing seals, the lowest and flattest spot on the entire island. The rest was steeply pitched on all sides, every direction leading to the surrounding bluffs and a precipitous plunge down to the ocean. You didn't want to lose your footing on the paths of the Blasket. You would roll straight through the furze and heather like a bead of rainwater running down a windshield, until you dropped off the edge of the world. Conor thought Durgan probably had one of those bluffs in mind for him.

Caol ait
. Thin places. Those spots where the barrier between the physical "here" and spiritual "there" becomes translucent. The Great Blasket maybe hadn't started out as one, but the lonely spirits murmuring through the crumbling walls had made it "thin". Their sorrows and the weight of inevitability pressed down on Conor, closing in around him. He'd play his hand to the end, but it wouldn't change the outcome. He could already see himself rolling.

K
ATE
FELT
MORE
frightened now than at any point during the night, a night that already seemed as long as a week. The stark, silent desolation of the island unnerved her. Her skin prickled, and a coldness at the back of her neck surged and receded like the waves in the distance. She couldn't fight the constant temptation to check behind her but each time saw only Durgan, several yards back, urging her forward. Lit by the glow of his flashlight, his face appeared wary and uncomfortable as well.

Next to her, his hand warm in hers, Conor had grown quiet, head tilted as though listening to the sounds of the ocean far below. After a few more steps, he whispered "Right," and stopped walking an instant before Durgan called out the order. He turned to her, lifting her face, and gave her a long, slow kiss.

"I love you." He breathed the words into her mouth, her ears, her hair. "I love you." And then, "Do you trust me?"

"Of course. You know I do." She held him tight, noticing Durgan had also stopped walking and seemed to be waiting for something. "What's going on? You're scaring me."

Incredibly, Conor grinned and gave her nose a light pinch. "I'm going to poke the bear. Trust me, and stay right here. Whatever happens, don't move. I don't know how this will work, but it won't work at all if you get in the middle, so stay right where you are. Promise?"
 

She didn't want to, but she nodded. He caressed her cheek, drew a calloused fingertip over her lips, and walked back toward Durgan.

"Here, I suppose?" Conor veered off to stand on a rounded hump of land several yards from Durgan. "This is what you had in mind? The angle is about right?"

"Cooperation. Unexpected, but appreciated." Durgan's smile flashed in the darkness.

"Is that what you think this is? It isn't." Conor took another step forward and spat on the ground. "This is me, standing here, dying like a man and I'm looking straight into the face of something else. A coward. A limp, fucking traitor."

"Careful, Conor. I can make things worse than they need to be."

A scream rose in Kate's throat as Durgan raised his gun. Without looking at her, Conor signaled her to stop, palm forward as though slamming it against a wall.

"Worse, how? You'll shoot off little bits of me? Send me over the cliff piece by piece because you're too bloody useless to take me down with your own hands?" Conor's voice rasped with a contemptuous, mocking sarcasm. "I suppose it must feel good to have a gun in your hands, right, Robert? To be able to fire off something and know it’s going to work for a change. You can take down a man like Desi Moore with a couple of shots, and mutilate him when he can't fight back. You can ruin what other people have—love, decency, honor—and pretend it compensates for what you can't do on your own."

"Shut the fuck up." In his fury, Durgan began to shake like a man with a fever, but he seemed transfixed and Kate had also frozen in place, each of them immobilized by Conor's litany of abuse.

"You couldn't keep faith with your Irish brothers, you couldn't be a criminal without getting caught. You thought you had my brother by the balls, but in the end Thomas ran circles around you and you didn't even know. How's that make you feel, Robert? Inadequate? That's the root of your problem, right? You think I don't know? You can't start anything, or keep it going, or finish it off without having the whole lot melt into a soft pile of shite."

Durgan lunged forward with a grating sob, and Conor was ready. He turned and dropped down to meet the charge, driving his shoulder into Durgan's mid-section. The gun flew from his hand as they went down together, but Conor couldn't maintain the advantage. Durgan suddenly twisted and flipped him onto his back, cracking his head against the ground.
 

Kate heard his cry of pain and could not keep her promise to stand still. She ran forward and picked up the gun while Conor, eyes squeezed shut, grappled his opponent into a clinch hold. He opened his eyes, and seeing her with the gun pointed at Durgan's back his face stretched in horror.

"Kate, no. For God's sake, don't do it."

Arms still locked around Durgan, he gave a mighty heave and rolled away from her, but then they kept rolling, and Kate saw the consequence of her broken promise. As she numbly watched, they tumbled together down the steep island hillside, and over the cliff.

Years earlier, Kate had seen the man she loved fall away from her, and without a second thought—really, without any thought at all—she'd plunged into the water after him. This time, she didn't. Because she was older, wiser? More afraid? Because taking a dive from a boat into deep water was not the same assurance of death as taking one off a cliff? It wasn’t for any of these reasons. She resisted running down the hill and over the edge, not because she was afraid to die, but because she was already dead—incapable of any decision, any emotion or sensation, or action. Dropping the gun, Kate fell slowly to the ground and remained there, cold as stone and just as insensible, until Sedgwick found her.

W
HEN
IT
ARRIVED
, as she would learn later, the only place the Coast Guard helicopter could have possibly landed was on the beach, but that was useless because the strand was too far away from her. Instead, the aircraft hovered overhead, several hundred feet away from Kate. Sedgwick was lowered on a hoist, and sprinted to her side just as she began to register the deafening roar of the rotors. He cradled her head with his ear to her mouth, straining to catch the mumbled details amidst her gibberish. As soon as he learned the most important fact, he raced to the edge of the cliff, scanning the area below. After that he became frantic to go, but worked carefully and patiently to connect Kate to the harness. Once they'd been lifted up into the helicopter, she looked at Sedgwick's stricken face, and something shattered inside her.

"We'll find him, Kate." He put his arms around her, holding her tight as she sobbed. "We won't leave until we do. He's down there somewhere and we'll find him, and bring him home."

The first body proved easy to find. Robert Durgan had fallen about thirty feet onto a jagged outcrop and still lay balanced on the edge like a rag doll, his back quite obviously broken, his neck cocked at a gruesome angle.

Sedgwick shouted at the Coast Guard crew as they began preparing the hoist. "He's dead, for Christ's sake. We can all see it. Keep looking and go back for him later."

The helicopter's spotlight worked itself away from Durgan, traveling to his left and right and down the cliff, and Kate followed the beam as though hypnotized, unable to look away even while Sedgwick gently tried coaxing her from the window. There was no need. He wasn't there. The spotlight dug into every crevice, and began working itself out in a sweeping movement across the water.

"I've got something." One of the crew with night vision binoculars shot a hand into the air, signaling the helicopter to move in closer. "In the tidal pool, right below. Yeah, definitely a . . . man." His glance hit Kate and quickly swiveled away. "Have we got a swimmer ready?"

"I'll get him," Sedgwick said quietly.

"You need a suit."

"No, I don't. Hurry up."

He was wrapped in Sedgwick's arms as the hoist slowly reeled them back from the sea. The agent bowed his head as they eased him inside, unable to meet Kate's eyes. She slipped from her seat and sank to the floor, taking Conor's hand as the medic scrambled into action. She thought he looked beautiful. His skin was the color of marble, perfectly smooth, his dark lashes wet and glistening. Miraculously, there wasn't a mark on him. A minute later, more miraculous still, Conor began to cough.

36

T
HE
WATER
CAME
OUT
OF
HIM
IN
PRODIGIOUS
FOAMING
GOUTS
, and before long Conor was trying to talk while still fighting for air. "Jaysus . . . the both of ye . . . crying?" He looked at Sedgwick in tender bemusement, and then at Kate with fierce, operational urgency. "Where is he?"

Sedgwick answered for her, wiping his eyes. "Bent double over a chunk of cliff. Backwards. They're mobilizing another chopper from Dublin to pick him up."

"No. Get him now."

"Easy, Conor. He's dead. Somehow, you're not. The hospital's not far. We're already over the mainland."

"Go back. Get him now." Conor became so agitated his vital signs began swinging wildly, alarming the young, redheaded medic.

"I'm trying to stabilize him, for fuck’s sake. If that's what he wants, go back and get him."

The pilot turned to Kate, and then all of them did, ceding the decision to her.

"Yes. Go back."

She understood the source of this superstitious compulsion. She'd already seen the grisly sight of her husband, tangled on the rocks. He might haunt her dreams for a while but he wasn't coming back this time. He couldn't hurt them anymore, and Conor deserved to see it for himself. He'd paid for the privilege.

T
HE
COUNTY
SEAT
of Tralee was a busy market town, but as the Coast Guard helicopter touched down in a field next to the local hospital Kate guessed the residents probably didn't often experience such sights. This was her second emergency air transport in as many months, and as before, Conor got whisked from sight with only vague explanations. The concussion was a concern, and given the amount of water he'd aspirated, his temperamental lungs were also a priority.

She took her customary spot on a padded plastic chair in the waiting room. They looked the same all over the world. This time she had Sedgwick for company—when he wasn't chain-smoking in the parking lot—along with some dark-suited phantoms who by now were entirely recognizable.

"Frank's working his network." Sedgwick nodded at one of the suits positioned at the emergency room door. "No news is getting out of this place tonight if he can help it." He bit a cheese and tomato sandwich in half, and swallowed the remainder in the next bite. "Unbelievable how much better the food is here, and I got that out of the vending machine. Do you want one?"

"Actually, I do. I'm starving."

Between the two of them, they made a healthy dent in the vending machine inventory before Sedgwick sat back and gave Kate one of his better smiles.

"So. How do you like me now?"

"You're my hero. Forever," she said, without sarcasm.

"Don't get carried away." He laughed. "You don't know me that well."

"I think I know all I need to." She passed him a bag of M&Ms. "Tell me how you found us."

"Of course I figured something had gone wrong, just wasn't sure how bad it was. Always safer to assume the worst, so I didn't risk the phone call." Sedgwick drained his can of soda and reached for another from the three lined up on the low table in front of them. "I got a taxi to take me all the way to the house. I go inside and it's empty, smells like puke. Your bags are there. Weird, cut up cord on the living room floor. I get back in the taxi, trying to figure out what to do next when the guy's radio starts going crazy about all these flares that just went up off the coast near Slea Head. Didn't take a genius. I mean, how much goes on in freakin' Dingle on an average night? I called Frank and he got busy, and about thirty minutes later the Coast Guard picked me up off the beach in Ventry Bay. So, that's me. How was your day?" He gave her an apologetic shrug. "I don't mean to pressure you, but I've got to leave soon and catch a military transport back to Andrews."