The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence by Kathryn Guare

snatched the file from his hands. “Who are you to tell me what’s enough, you poncey little shit?” he snarled. “You think it isn’t fair you had to talk rubbish to a pretty girl? This is how it’s done. We gather intelligence, we analyze it, and we act on it. You need to get your head round that, and stop smirking your way through this training as though it were a Boy’s Own adventure story. The men and women dedicating their lives to this service deserve your respect, not your snide condescension.”
    “I have plenty of respect for the men and women in this service,” Conor said. “I just have no desire to join them. This isn’t a career choice for me.”
    “A point you’ve clarified more than once,” Bestor growled, “to the perverse distress of your trainers, who appear to consider it a bloody shame.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Never mind.” Bestor let the file drop onto his desk. His anger dissipated with a sigh. “At any rate, the field techniques section is finished. We realize, of course, that many of them are archaic. The main objective was to instill a sense of discipline and a respect for cautious, methodical process. Whatever you might have thought of them, you performed well.”
    He paused, staring pointedly down at the desk, and Conor realized he was expected to acknowledge the compliment. He dipped his head apologetically.
    “Thanks. Listen, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make anyone’s job harder. I’ll work on my attitude. What comes next?”
    “Intensive language lessons, weapons and martial arts training, and computer labs,” Bestor responded promptly. “Tomorrow you’ll be briefed on the methods of international money laundering. Britain boasts the preeminent expert on the subject, and he’s coming down from London to spend the day with you.”
    “What’s his name?”  
    “Lawrence Shelton.”  
    “Ah. Brilliant.”

    S HELTON APPEARED BRIGHT and early the following morning as promised and proved every bit as surly in his new role as faculty member. Despite his attempts to stupefy him with the arcane details of tax shelters and fraudulent invoicing, Conor found the basic concepts of money laundering easy enough to understand.
    “It’s pretty clear Thomas is taking in the money from the source,” Shelton said, jabbing a stubby thumb at the puzzling hieroglyph he’d circled in the center of a whiteboard.
    They were conducting the session in one of the Fort’s smaller seminar rooms, and Conor had patiently watched him draw a bewildering series of figures and arrows to illustrate the methods by which funds could elude the finance mechanisms meant to track them.
    “Somebody has a shitload of cash they want to use to arm this pack of lunatics up in the mountains. Well, nobody deals in cash anymore. They can’t just throw it into sacks and head off for their meeting in Bahrain, Vladivostok, or wherever the hell. They need to put it somewhere, and Thomas is taking care of it. He’s managing to get it deposited without tripping any alarms. How’s that, then? Couple of possibilities. Either he’s got a high-level partner in a bank somewhere that’s binning the transaction reports, or he’s cutting out the banks as the entry point altogether. Personally, I’m plumping for the latter theory.”
    Shelton pulled up a chair and leaned forward across the table. Conor saw a gleam of sharp intelligence in his muddy brown eyes and found he could afford a greater measure of respect for a man who brought such a keen sense of curiosity and analysis to a subject that seemed impossibly dry.
    “They don’t need a bank, you see. As far as they’re concerned, he is the bank.”
    Conor exhaled a small sigh of exasperation. “Thomas has become a banker, now. Is that what you’re telling me?”
    “Not in the regular sense. I think some schemer a good bit smarter than your brother took all that money that got filched out of the EU and incorporated a shell company to look like it had some