The Marching Season Read online

  Beckwith turned and shook Douglas's hand as the small audience broke into applause. He held out his hand to the podium, and Douglas moved to the microphones.

  "There will be many important issues in London, issues of trade and defense, but none more important now than helping the government of Prime Minister Blair to bring a lasting peace to Northern Ireland."

  Douglas paused for a moment, looking past the audience directly into the television cameras.

  "I have one thing to say to the men of violence, to those who wish to undo the Good Friday accords. The days of the gun and the bomb and the balaclava are over. The people of Northern Ireland have spoken. Your day is done." He paused a moment. "Mr. President, I look forward to serving you in London."

  13

  PORTADOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND

  "YOU HEAR THE NEWS THIS AFTERNOON?" KYLE BLAKE ASKED, AS HE sat down in his usual booth at McConville's pub.

  "I did indeed," Gavin Spencer said. "The man has a big mouth."

  "Can we get to him?" Blake said, to no one in particular.

  "If we can get to Eamonn Dillon, we can get to an American ambassador," Gavin Spencer said. "But does it serve our purposes?"

  "The Americans haven't paid a price for their support of the Good Friday accords," Blake said. "If we're able to assassinate the American ambassador, everyone in the States will know who we are and what we're about. Remember, we're not trying to win a battlefield victory, we're trying to win publicity for our cause. If we kill Douglas Cannon, the entire American media will be forced to tell the story of Ulster from the Protestant perspective.

  It's like a reflex action. That's what they do. It worked for the IRA, and it worked for the PLO. But can it really be done?"

  "We can do it any number of ways," Spencer said. "We need just one thing: We need to know when and where. We need intelligence on his movements, his whereabouts. We have to choose our opportunity carefully or it won't work."

  Blake and Spencer looked at Rebecca Wells.

  Blake said, "Can you get us the kind of information we'll need?"

  "Without question," Rebecca said. "I'll need to go to London. I'll need a flat, some money, and most of all plenty of time. Information like this doesn't come overnight."

  Blake took a long pull from his Guinness while he thought it all through. After a moment he looked up at Rebecca. "I want you to set up shop in London as soon as possible. I'll get you the money in the morning."

  He turned to Gavin.

  "Start preparing your team. They're not to be told the target until it's absolutely necessary. And tread softly, both of you. Tread very softly."

  FEBRUARY

  14

  NEW YORK CITY

  "How was London?" Adrian Carter asked.

  They had entered Central Park at Ninetieth Street and Fifth Avenue and were walking the cinder and dirt footpath on the levee surrounding the reservoir. Freezing wind stirred the leafless tree limbs above their heads. Near the banks of the reservoir the water had frozen, but a short distance from shore, in a patch of mercury-colored water, a flotilla of ducks bobbed like tiny vessels at anchor.

  "How did you know I was in London?" Michael asked.

  "Because British Intelligence sent me a polite note asking if your visit was business or pleasure. I told them you were retired, so it was surely pleasure. Was I right?"

  "Depends on your definition of pleasure," Michael said, and Carter laughed mildly.

  Adrian Carter was the chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center. He had served as Michael's control officer when Michael was working in the field. Even now they moved as though they were meeting behind enemy lines. Carter walked like a man wrestling with an eternally guilty conscience, shoulders hunched, hands thrust deep into his pockets. His large droopy eyes gave him the appearance of perpetual fatigue, yet they flickered constantly around the trees and the reservoir and across the faces of the joggers foolish enough to brave the biting cold. He wore an ugly woolen ski hat that robbed him of any physical authority. His pudgy down jacket created a floating effect, so he seemed to be blowing along the footpath with the wind. Strangers tended to underestimate Carter, which he had used to his advantage throughout his career, both in the field and in the bureaucratic trenches at Headquarters. He was a brilliant linguist— he dreamed in a half-dozen languages—and he had lost count of the countries where he had operated.

  "So what the hell were you doing in London?" Carter asked.

  Michael told him.

  Carter said, "Pick up anything interesting?"

  Michael told Carter what he had learned during his meeting with Graham Seymour without divulging the source. Typically, Carter didn't indicate whether any of the information was news to him. He was like that, even with Michael. The office wits in the CTC used to say that Carter would rather face torture than volunteer where he had eaten lunch.

  "And what brings you to New York?" Michael asked.

  "Some business at New York Station." Carter stopped speaking as a pair of joggers—a young woman and an older man— pounded past. "A little housekeeping that needed to be done in person. And I wanted to see you."

  "Why?"

  "Jesus Christ, Michael, we've known each other twenty years," Carter said, with the amiable irritation that in him passed for anger. "I didn't think there was anything wrong with dropping by for a chat while I was in town."

  "So why are we walking in the park in twenty-degree weather?"

  "I have an aversion to closed, unswept rooms."

  They reached the clock in the old pumping station at the southern end of the reservoir. A group of tourists speaking German with Viennese accents were posing for pictures. Michael and Carter turned refiexively, like a pair of synchronized swimmers, and crossed a wooden footbridge. A moment later they were walking along the Park Drive, behind the Metropolitan Museum.

  "That was awfully nice of the Senate to send Douglas off to London with a unanimous confirmation vote," Carter said.

  "He was surprised. He thought that at least one of his old Republican adversaries would want to spoil the party."

  Carter put his gloved hands to his mouth and exhaled heavily to warm his face, which had gone crimson with the cold. Carter was a habitual golfer, and winters depressed him.

  "But you didn't come here to discuss Douglas, did you, Adrian?"

  Carter removed his hand from his face and said, "Actually, I was wondering when you were going to come back to work. I need you in the CTC."

  "Why do you need me all of a sudden?"

  "Because you're one of those rare birds who can move effortlessly between Headquarters and the field. For very selfish reasons I want you back on my team."

  "Sorry, Adrian, but I'm out, and I intend to stay out. Life's good."

  "You're bored out of your mind. And if you tell me otherwise, you're a liar."

  Michael stopped and turned to face Carter, anger on his face. "How dare you fucking come here and—"

  "All right," Carter said. "Perhaps my choice of words was inappropriate, but what the hell have you been doing with yourself all these months?"

  "I've been taking care of my family, spending time with my children, and trying to act like a normal human being for the first time in my adult life."

  "Any job prospects?"

  "Not really."

  "Do you ever intend to go back to work?"

  "I'm not sure," Michael said. "I have no real job experience, because the company I worked for was a CIA front. And I'm barred from telling a potential employer what I really did for a living."

  "Why not come home?"

  "Because it didn't feel much like home the last time I visited."

  "Let's put that all behind us and start over again."

  "Did you learn that line in one of those employee management seminars at Personnel?"

  Carter stopped walking. "The director is coming to New York tonight. Your presence has been requested at dinner."

  "I have plans."

  "Mic
hael, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency would like to have dinner with you. Surely you can put aside your arrogance and make a little time in your busy schedule."

  "I'm sorry, Adrian, but you're wasting your time, and so is the director. I'm just not interested. It was good seeing you, though. Give my love to Christine and the children."

  Michael turned and started walking.

  "If you want out so badly, why did you go to Cairo?" Carter said. "You went to Cairo because you think October is still alive. And frankly, so do I."

  Michael turned around.

  Carter said, "I guess I finally got your attention."

  Monica Tyler had reserved a private room at Picholine on West Sixty-fourth Street near the park. When Michael entered the restaurant, Carter was sitting alone at the end of the bar, nursing a glass of white wine. He wore a double-breasted blue suit, while Michael wore jeans and a black blazer. They greeted each other without speaking and without shaking hands. Michael gave his overcoat to the coatroom girl, and the two men followed the glossy hostess through the restaurant.

  The private dining room in Picholine is actually the wine room, dark and cool, with hundreds of bottles lying in stained-oak floor-to-ceiling racks. Monica Tyler sat alone, bathed in the gentle glow of the recessed lighting, a file spread before her. She closed the file and put away her gold-rimmed reading glasses as Michael and Carter entered the room.

  "Michael, so good to see you again," she said. She remained seated and held out her right hand at a strange angle so that Michael wasn't certain whether he was expected to shake it or kiss it.

  It was Monica Tyler who had hastened Michael's departure from the Agency by ordering an internal investigation into his conduct in the TransAtlantic affair. She had been the executive director then, but six months later, President Beckwith had nominated her to be the director. Beckwith had entered that phase of any two-term presidency when the most important item on his agenda was securing his place in history. He believed nominatingonica Tyler to be the first woman to head the CIA would help. The Agency had survived novices before, Michael thought, and the Agency would survive Monica Tyler.

  Monica ordered a bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse without looking at the wine list. She had used the room for important meetings when she worked on Wall Street. She assured Michael that their conversation was utterly private. They made small talk about Washington politics and benign Agency gossip while deciding what to order. Monica and Carter spoke in front of Michael the way parents sometimes speak in front of children—he was no longer a member of the secret fraternity and therefore not to be entirely trusted.

  "Adrian tells me he failed to convince you to return to the Agency," Monica said abruptly. "That's why I'm here. Adrian wants you back in the CTC, and I want to help Adrian get what he wants."

  Adrian wants you back, Michael thought. But what about you, Monica?

  She had turned her body to Michael and settled her unfaltering gaze on him. Somewhere during her ascent, Monica Tyler had learned to use her eyes as a weapon. They were liquid and blue and changed instantly with her mood. When she was interested her eyes became translucent and fastened on her subject with therapeutic intensity. When she was annoyed—or, worse yet, bored—her pupils froze over and her gaze turned unreflecting. When she was angry her eyes flickered about her victim like searchlights, scanning for a kill zone.

  Monica had had no experience in intelligence when she came to Langley, but Michael and everyone else at Headquarters quickly learned that underestimating Monica could be fatal. She was a prodigious reader with a powerful intellect and a spy's flawless memory. She was also a gifted liar who had never been saddled with a cumbersome moral compass. She controlled the circumstances around her like a seasoned professional field officer. The rituals of secrecy fit Monica as well as her tailored Chanel suit.

  "Frankly, I understand why you chose to leave in the first place," she said, placing an elbow on the table and a hand beneath her chin. "You were angry with me because I had suspended you. But I revoked that suspension and removed all references to it from your service record."

  "Am I supposed to be grateful, Monica?"

  "No, just professional."

  Monica paused as the first course was presented. She pushed her salad away from her a few inches, signaling she had no intention of eating. Carter kept his head down and devoured a plate of grilled octopus.

  "I wanted out because you let me down and the Agency let me down," Michael said.

  "An intelligence service has rules, and officers and agents must live by those rules," Monica said. "I shouldn't have to explain this to you, Michael. You grew up in the Agency. You knew the rules when you signed up."

  "What's the job?"

  "Now that's more like it."

  "I haven't agreed to anything yet," Michael said quickly. "But I'll hear what you have to say."

  "The President has ordered us to create a special task force on Northern Irish terrorism."

  "Why would I want to come back and get involved in Northern Ireland? Ulster is a British problem and a British matter. We're just spectators."

  "We're not asking you to come out of retirement and penetrate the Ulster Freedom Brigade, Michael," Carter said.

  "That's what I do, Adrian."

  "No, Michael, that's what you used to do," Monica said.

  "Why the sudden push inside the Agency on Northern Ireland? Ulster's never been a high priority at Langley."

  "The President considers the peace agreement in Northern Ireland one of the crowning foreign policy achievements of his presidency," Monica said. "But he also understands, as we do, that the agreement could unravel in a heartbeat. What he needs from the Agency is information and assessment. He needs to know when to step in and lean on the parties and when to sit back and do nothing. He needs to know when a public statement might be helpful and when it would be better to keep his mouth shut."

  "What do you want from me?"

  "It's what James Beckwith wants—not what I want. And what the President wants is for you to lead the task force."

  "Why me?"

  "Because you're an experienced counterterrorism officer, and you have some experience with the terrain. You also know how Headquarters works and how to negotiate the bureaucracy. You have a powerful ally in Adrian"—she hesitated a moment—"and in me. There's one other thing. Your father-in-law is going to be the next ambassador to the Court of St. James's."

  "I live in New York now," Michael said. "Elizabeth left the firm in Washington and she's practicing law in Manhattan."

  "You can work from New York Station a couple of days a week and take the shuttle to Washington the rest of the time. The Agency will pay for your travel for the duration of the special task force. After that, we'll have to discuss other arrangements."

  Monica picked up her fork and impaled a few leaves of lettuce.

  "And then, of course, there's the issue of October," she said. "Adrian has been working that front."

  Carter pushed away his empty plate and wiped his mouth. "The assassin of Ahmed Hussein in Cairo didn't smell right to us from the beginning. We suspected the Israelis were involved, but they denied it publicly, and they denied it privately to us. So we started calling on contacts, knocking on doors. You know the drill." Carter spoke as though he were describing the events of a very dull weekend at home. "We have a source inside the Mossad. He told us Ari Shamron, the Mossad chief, ordered the killing and personally oversaw the operation to make certain there were no fuckups."

  Monica Tyler looked up sharply from her salad. She detested coarse language and had outlawed cursing in all senior staff meetings. She dabbed at her lips with the corner of her napkin.

  "The source said Shamron went outside the Mossad for the shooter," Carter said. "A high-priced assassin, a contract killer. He said Shamron paid for the job with funds raised from private sources."

  "Did he have a description of the assassin?"

  "No."

  "Geographic lo
cation?"

  "Europe or the Middle East. Maybe the Mediterranean."

  "I've seen a videotape of the assassination."

  "I beg your pardon?" Adrian asked.

  Michael told Adrian of his meeting with Yousef Hafez.

  "You think the gunman was October?" Carter asked.

  "I've seen him move, and I've seen him use a gun," Michael said. "It could very well be the same man, but it's difficult to say. I may be able to prove it, though."

  "How?"

  "I shot him through his hand that night on Shelter Island," Michael said. "His right hand. His gun hand. During the assassination of Ahmed Hussein the gunman wasn't wearing gloves. If I can spot a scar on the hand, I'll know it's October."

  "Where's the tape?" Carter said.

  "I have it."

  The waiter knocked, entered the room, and cleared away the remains of the first course.

  When he was gone again, Monica said, "If you return to the Agency, I'm prepared to expand your portfolio. You will be the head of the Northern Ireland task force, and you will also be given the assignment of tracking and arresting October, if he truly is alive. Now, do we have a deal, Michael?"

  "I need to speak to Elizabeth first," he said. "I'll give you an answer in the morning."

  "You're a case officer who's been trained to persuade men to betray their country," Monica said, smiling pleasantly. "I'm sure you'll have no trouble convincing your wife that this is the right decision."

  Adrian Carter laughed and said, "You don't know Elizabeth."

  After dinner Michael wanted to walk. The apartment was directly across Central Park, on Fifth Avenue, but even Michael, a former CIA field officer trained in the martial arts, knew it was best to avoid the park at night. He went south on Central Park West, rounded Columbus Circle, and walked past the stinking horse-drawn carriages along Central Park South.

  It started to snow as he headed uptown on Fifth Avenue, along the cobblestone sidewalk bordering the park. He was dreading the conversation he was about to have with Elizabeth; she would be furious, and rightly so. He had made her a promise after October and Astrid Vogel had tried to kill them—that he would leave the Agency and never return—and now he was going to break that promise.