The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence Read Online Free PDF

government contractor.”
    “You are about to become one.”  
    “The hell I am.”
    “You are being tiresome,” Frank said irritably. “Sign or do not sign, whatever you choose, but if you do not sign, our business together is—”
    “Oh, shut up, Frank.” He signed his name and shoved the paperwork across the table. “You’re pretty tiresome yourself.”
    The document disappeared into Frank’s jacket. Settling back with a satisfied sigh, he warmed his brandy glass between his hands and smiled.
    “Good. Very good. By all means, let us continue. MI5, the UK’s domestic service, is engaged in a number of complicated activities involving the IRA, and as you’ve perhaps read in the papers, some of them have gone rather poorly. No one welcomed a new case that didn’t fit their existing profiles, so the file floated up and down the hierarchy for a few weeks before someone had the bright idea of tossing it to me. Because of my . . . unique . . . connections with the Irish network—I serve as the MI6 liaison to MI5 in IRA-related matters—they thought I might be useful to them. I think they’d also grown weary of having me at their meetings dissecting their various cock-ups. They wanted to get me busy with something that didn’t involve them directly.”
    “What’s so unique about your connections to Ireland?” Conor asked.
    Frank playfully swirled a mouthful of brandy around in his cheek before responding. “I spent the first thirty years of my life there—born in Kildare, grew up in Monaghan. I’m as Irish as you are, Conor. Have I surprised you?”
    “Go on outta that, Frank.” Conor threw back the whiskey and reached for the decanter that had been left on the table. “You’re spreading it a bit thick now. You don’t seriously expect me to believe that?”
    “I confess that I expected you would. It pains to hear you have so little trust in my word. I flattered myself we had established some rapport.”
    “Rapport is not the same thing as trust.”
    Frank acknowledged the retort with a nod and watched him pour a generous measure of whiskey into his glass. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” he asked.
    Conor raised an eyebrow at him. “On the contrary, I don’t think I’ve had half enough, and if you were really Irish, you’d know the difference. Don’t stop now, though. This is good. Tell me all about your Monaghan boyhood and how it made you the perfect recruit for MI6. Because the British love telling their secrets to the Irish, don’t they? We can hardly shut them up.”
    “All right. Never mind.” Frank shook his head in bemusement. “It’s irrelevant whether you believe me or not, and it’s a different story altogether. We don’t have time for it now.”
    “Oh, sure. You need a bit more time to come up with a proper stem-winder? Christ, spare me that. You’re about as Irish as the Prince of Wales.”
    “Fine. Suppose we return to our principal theme?”  
    “Fine.”
    Frank took a deep breath before continuing. “We made the usual round of inquiries around Belfast. No one had ever heard of Thomas McBride from Dingle, and no one knew of any large amounts of cash filtering into IRA coffers from fraudulent EU grants. Eventually, though, information surfaced about a skunk-works operation within a cast-off element of the IRA. It seems some financial wizard has set up a system to support money-laundering projects developed with hundreds of thousands of euro cadged out of the EU. One of the operation’s clients is rumored to be a Mumbai group fronting the cost of weaponry for a paramilitary group in the Jammu-Kashmir region of South Asia. They need to disguise the money as well as its purpose. In return for a hefty commission, this quasi-IRA group provides its services, and they have placed a man on the ground in India to manage the client and the flow of money.”
    “You’re saying this man . . . ” Conor paused to stifle his shrill incredulity and started again more