Smoked

local French authorities weren’t made aware of it, of the five people killed, the Brit was actually an IMI agent, and two others were CIA operatives—the American and one member of the French family, Pierre Martin. Martin’s wife and son were also killed in the attack. His two daughters, then aged eight and six, survived with minor injuries.
After five years of investigation, French police said they had “no working theory” to explain the murders and no suspects. Given there was no known link between the three operatives killed, the CIA had no working theory either.
The other two cases Casper gave to me also related to murders of CIA agents that had taken place in France. The first was of a Russian-American double-agent; the second case involved an undercover agent on a mission for South Korea.
There were countless other cases of murdered CIA agents that had gone unsolved, but each of these three could ultimately lead to a connection with Byrne, Kim, and/or Antonov—the very men Cope believed the former director had been working either with or for.

22
Siren
After more than a feckin’ week, I still hadn’t tracked down James Mallory. I began to think the gobshite was hiding from me.
I’d spent the last several days learning all I could about my dearly departed mother. She was a right saint from the way people talked about her. I began having my own memories of her after the family who lived in the house I grew up in got wind that I was in town and invited me to pop over for a visit.
As I walked through the front gate and up to the door, it was as though I’d traveled back in time. I suddenly felt like a young lass coming home from school.
As I sat in their kitchen, I could see myself having breakfast as my mother fussed about, getting both of us ready for our day. And then doing my homework at the same table while I waited for her to get home from work.
I didn’t remember my mother being particularly angelic or mean-spirited. My ma was just my ma.
It was when the woman invited me to look around upstairs that my memories hit the hardest. As I rounded the corner into the room where I somehow knew my mother slept, even without closing my eyes, I could see her lying in the bed where she’d breathed her last breath.
“I’m so sorry,” said the woman. “I know your ma was sick for a long time.”
“Cancer,” I murmured, walking farther down the hallway to the room that had been mine. “Do you have a daughter?” I asked, after opening the door and seeing the same pink-flowered wallpaper that had always been there.
“We did have,” the woman said, wiping away her own tears.
“Oh,” I said, startled. “My apologies.”
“Cancer like your ma. Her name was Siobhan too.”
I was overcome by discomfort and wanted to race back down the stairs and out of the house, but the woman had been so kind, I stopped myself.
“Thank you for allowing me a look about.”
“You’re welcome to come back around anytime.”
I nodded, making a beeline for the front door. “Thank you, and goodbye.” I was about to close the door when she hollered for me to wait.
“I have something that belongs to you.” She came to where I stood in the doorway, carrying a small metal box.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
“I’ve no idea.” She pointed to the padlock on the latch. “I couldn’t find a key.”
“Um, I’ve walked here from my hotel. Would it be all right if I swung by and picked it up later?”
“Of course. It’s been here as long as we’ve lived here; another few hours won’t matter.”
I went straight from there back to the cemetery where my mother, along with her parents, whom I’d never met, were buried. I sat down in front of her tombstone, pulled my legs up tight to my body, and wrapped my arms around them.
“Did we ever talk?” I asked out loud, staring at her name etched into the stone. “Why can’t I remember us having conversations?”
What no one seemed to know, or was willing to talk about, was who had gotten my mother pregnant. Was it another memory unwilling to reveal itself to me, or had it always been kept from me?
“Who was he, Ma?” I looked up at a man who could be about her age, walking down the sidewalk. He kept going without looking in my direction. “Was it him?” I asked, pointing toward the road. I lowered my head and cried, feeling the pain of missing her for the first time since I set foot in Waterford several days ago.
When I looked up again a few minutes later, I saw an older man rest a bouquet of flowers near a stone a few graves over.
“Sorry to disturb, lass,” he said.
“You’re not.” I got up, brushed off my backside, and walked over to him. “Was she your wife?” I asked.
“Aye. Some sixty years.”
I noticed the date of her death was only a little over a year ago. “You must miss her terribly.”
“Aye,” he repeated, looking down at the etched stone like I had at my mother’s. “You’re Siobhan,” he said.
“I am. Do I know you?”
“It hasn’t been that many years, lass.”
“You’re probably not going to believe this, but I have amnesia.”
“You remember your name. That’s a good sign.”
I laughed. “It is that.”
“You and your dear mother lived just down the road from my Janie and me.”
“Did we? My apologies, Mr. O’Brien,” I said, glancing at the gravestone.
He shook his head. “I’ve always been Uncle Gene to you.”
“Now I feel really terrible.”
He smiled and patted my hand when I rested it on his arm. “Don’t you dare, my girl.”
I pointed toward my mother’s grave. “I’ll just leave you to your privacy, then.”
“On my way home now, anyway. How long are you in town?”
“That’s a bit up in the air at the moment.”
“I hope to run into you again. Are you staying in the neighborhood?”
“At the