The Marching Season Read online

  "I'm afraid that's all they have now, sir."

  Michael got in the car and drove north along Great Victoria Street. He turned into a small side street, pulled over, and climbed out. He opened the hood and loosened wires until the engine stopped. He closed the hood, removed the keys from the ignition, and walked back to the Europa. He informed the concierge the Escort had broken down and told him where he could find it.

  Twenty minutes later a new car arrived, a Vauxhall, dark blue.

  Kevin Maguire, code name Harbinger, had used a dozen different rendezvous sequences over the years, but he had asked to use his original pattern tonight, three sites scattered around Belfast city center at one-hour intervals. Both men were to proceed to the first site. If either spotted surveillance or felt uncomfortable for any reason, they would try again at the second. If the second was no good they would try the third. If the third site was bad, they would call it a night and try to make the meeting the next evening at three new sites.

  Michael drove toward the first site: the Donegall Quay near the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, over the River Lagan. He knew the streets of Belfast well, and for twenty minutes he engaged in a standard SDR, the Agency abbreviation for a surveillance detection run. He wove his way through the streets of the city center, checking his tail constantly. He went to Donegall Quay, intending to make the meeting, but there was no sign of Maguire, so Michael drove on without stopping. It was not like Maguire to pass on a meeting; he was a seasoned professional terrorist, not the kind of agent to see danger when it wasn't there.

  Kevin Maguire had grown up in the Ballymurphy housing estates during the 1970s, the son of an unemployed shipyard worker and a seamstress. At night he had gone into the streets with the other boys and fought the British army and the RUC with stones and petrol bombs. Once he had shown Michael a childhood photograph, a ragamuffin with cropped hair, a leather jacket, and a necklace of spent shell casings. He had been something of a hero in the Ballymurphy because he was expert at upending army saracens with empty beer barrels. Like most Catholics in West Belfast he admired and feared the men of the IRA—admired them because they protected the population from the Protestant killer squads of the UVF and the UDA, feared them because they kneecapped or brutally beat anyone that stepped out of line. Maguire's father had been kneecapped for selling stolen goods door to door to supplement the family's monthly payment from the dole.

  Maguire had been a member of Na Fianna Eirean—a sort of Republican Boy Scouts—and his father had insisted he stay in despite the kneecapping. When he was twenty-two he volunteered for the IRA. He took the IRA's secret oath during a ceremony in the living room of his parents' house in the Ballymurphy. Maguire never would forget the look on his father's face, the strange mixture of pride and humiliation that his son was now a member of the organization that had taken his legs. He was assigned to the Belfast Brigade and eventually became part of an elite active service unit in Britain. Maguire developed good contacts inside the Army Council, the IRA's military command, and the IRA's Belfast Intelligence Unit, which proved invaluable when he crossed over and became a spy.

  The event that pushed Maguire into betrayal was the IRA bombing of a Remembrance Day parade at Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, on November 8, 1987. Eleven people were killed and sixty-three wounded when a massive bomb exploded with no warning. The IRA tried to defuse public outrage over the massacre by saying it was a mistake. Maguire knew the truth; he had been part of the unit that carried out the attack.

  Maguire was furious with the Army Council for attacking a "soft" civilian target. He privately vowed he would prevent the IRA from carrying out similar attacks in the future. His hatred and mistrust of the British ruled out working for British Intelligence or the RUC's Special Branch, so on his next trip to London he contacted the CIA. Michael was sent to Belfast to establish contact with him. Maguire refused to take money—"your thirty pieces of silver," as he called it—and despite the fact he was an IRA terrorist, Michael came to regard him as a decent man.

  The CIA and its British counterparts have an implicit agreement: The Agency does not "collect" on British soil, meaning it does not attempt to penetrate the IRA or recruit assets inside British Intelligence. After Michael had established contact with Maguire, the Agency went to the British. MI5 was dubious at first, but it agreed to allow Michael to continue meeting with Maguire as long as it received the intelligence simultaneously with Langley. Over the next several years, Maguire fed Michael a steady stream of information on IRA operations, giving the Agency and the British a window on the high command of the organization. Maguire became the most important IRA informer in the history of the conflict. When Michael was pulled from the field, a new American case officer was assigned to Maguire, a man named Jack Buchanan from London Station. Michael had not seen or spoken to Maguire since.

  Michael drove south on the Ormeau Road. The second rendezvous point was the Botanic Gardens, at the intersection of the Stranmills Road and the University Road. Once again, Michael felt confident he was not being followed. But once again Maguire didn't make the rendezvous.

  The last site was a rugby pitch in a section of Belfast known as Newtownbreda, and it was there, an hour later, that Michael found Kevin Maguire, standing beneath a goal.

  "Why did you pass on the first two?" Michael asked, as Maguire climbed in and closed the door.

  "Nothing I could see—just bad vibes." Maguire lit a cigarette. He looked more like a coffeehouse revolutionary than the real thing. He wore a dark raincoat, black sweater, and black jeans. Belfast had aged Maguire since Michael had seen him last. His short-cropped black hair was shot with gray, and there were lines around his eyes. He wore fashionable European eyeglasses now, round metal-rimmed spectacles, too small for his face.

  "Where'd you get the car?" Maguire asked.

  "The concierge at the Europa. I pulled the engine cables on the first one, and they sent this twenty minutes later. It's clean."

  "I don't talk in closed rooms or cars, or have you forgotten

  everything since they brought you inside?"

  "I haven't forgotten. Where do you want to go?"

  "How about the mountain, just like the old days? Pull over so

  I can get us some beer."

  Michael drove north through Belfast, then followed a narrow road up the side of Black Mountain. The rain had ended by the time he pulled into a turnout and killed the engine. They climbed out and sat on the hood of the Vauxhall, drinking warm beer, listening to the ticking of the engine. Belfast spread below them. Clouds lay over the city like a silk scarf thrown over a lampshade. It was a dark city at night. Yellow sodium light burned in the city center, but in the west, in the Falls, the Shankill, and the Ardoyne, it looked like a blackout. Maguire usually felt peace in this place—he had lost his virginity here, as had half the boys of the Ballymurphy—but tonight he was on edge. He was smoking too much, gulping his lager, sweating in spite of the cold.

  He talked. He told Michael old stories. He talked about growing up in the Ballymurphy, about fighting the Brits and torching their "pigs." He told Michael about making love on Black Mountain for the first time. "Her name was Catherine, a Catholic girl. I was so guilty I went to confession the next day and spilled my guts to Father Seamus," he said. "I spilled my guts to Father Sea-mus quite a few other times over the years, every time I popped a British soldier or an RUC man, every time I planted a bomb in city center or London."

  He told Michael about an affair that he had had with a Protestant girl from the Shankill just before he joined the IRA. She became pregnant, and both sets of parents forbade them to ever see each other again.

  "We knew it was for the best," he said. "We would have been outcasts in both communities. We would have had to leave Northern Ireland, live in fucking England or emigrate to America. She had the baby, a boy. I've never seen him." He paused. "You know, Michael, I never planted a bomb in the Shankill."

  "Because you were afraid you might kill your own son."<
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  "Yeah, because I was afraid I might kill my son, a son I've never seen." He pulled the top off another beer. "I don't know what the fuck we've been doing here for the last thirty years. I don't know what it was for. I've given twenty years of my life to the IRA, twenty years to the fucking cause. I'm forty-five years old. I've no wife. I've no real family. And for what? A deal that could have been reached a dozen times since 'sixty-nine?"

  "It was the best the IRA could hope for," Michael said. "There's nothing wrong with compromise."

  "And now Gerry Adams has a wonderful idea," Maguire said, ignoring Michael. "He wants to turn the Falls into a tourist area. Start up a bed-and-breakfast or two. Can you imagine it? Come see the streets where the Prods and the Micks fought an ugly little war for three decades. Jesus fucking Christ, but I never thought I'd live to see the day] Three thousand dead so we can make the travel section of The New York Times."

  He finished his beer and threw the empty can down the side of the mountain.

  "The thing you Americans don't understand is that there'll never be peace here. We may stop slaughtering each other for a while, but nothing's ever going to change in this place. Nothing's going to change." He tossed his cigarette over the edge of the hillside and watched the ember disappear into the darkness. "Anyway, you didn't come all the way here to listen to me babble about politics and the failures of the Irish Republican Army."

  "No, I didn't. I want to know who killed Eamonn Dillon."

  "So does the fucking IRA."

  "What do you know?"

  "We suspect Dillon had been targeted for assassination for a very long time."

  "Why?"

  "As soon as Dillon was killed, the boys from the Intelligence Unit went to work. They suspected someone inside Sinn Fein had betrayed him because the killer appeared at precisely the right spot at precisely the right time. It was possible the Loyalists followed him around the Falls, watched him, but not very likely. It's difficult for them to operate in a place like the Falls without being identified, and Dillon was careful about his routine."

  "So what happened?"

  "IRA Intelligence turned Sinn Fein headquarters upside down. They searched every square inch of the place for transmitters and miniature video cameras. They scared the shit out of the staff and the volunteers, and it paid off."

  "What did they find?"

  "One of the volunteers, a girl named Kathleen who answered the phones, had been carrying on a friendship with a Protestant girl."

  "Did the girl have a name?"

  "Called herself Stella. Kathleen thought there was nothing wrong with her friendship with Stella because of the peace agreement. The IRA leaned on her in a very big way. She acknowledged that she had told Stella things about the Sinn Fein leadership, including Eamonn Dillon."

  "Is Kathleen still with us?"

  "Barely," Maguire said. "Dillon was beloved inside the IRA. He was a member of the Belfast Brigade in the seventies. He served under Gerry Adams. He spent ten years in the Maze on a weapons charge. The IRA was ready to put a bullet in the back of her head, but Gerry Adams intervened and saved her life."

  "I assume Kathleen gave the IRA a description of Stella?"

  "Tall, attractive, black hair, gray eyes, good cheekbones, square jawline. Unfortunately, that's all the IRA has to work with. Stella was a real pro and damned careful. She never met Kathleen in a place with Sinn Fein surveillance cameras."

  "What does the IRA know about the Ulster Freedom Brigade?"

  "Fuck all," Maguire said. "But I'll tell you this. The IRA isn't going to sit on its hands forever. If the security forces don't get this thing under control, and soon, this fucking place is going to blow sky high."

  Michael dropped Maguire at the intersection of Divis Street and the Millfield Road. He climbed out and melted back into the Falls without looking back. Michael drove the few blocks to the Europa and left the car with the valet. Maguire hadn't given him much, but it was a start. The Ulster Freedom Brigade appeared to have a sophisticated intelligence apparatus, and one of their operatives was a tall woman with black hair and gray eyes. He also felt very good about himself; after a long time on the sidelines he had gone into the field and carried off a successful clandestine meeting with an agent. He was anxious to get back to London so he could get the information to Headquarters.

  It was late, but he was hungry and too edgy to stay in his hotel room. The girl at the reception desk sent him to a restaurant called Arthur's, just off Great Victoria Street. He sat at a small table near the door with his guidebooks for protection. He ate Irish beef and potatoes smothered in cream and cheese, washed down by a half bottle of decent claret. It was eleven o'clock when he stepped outside again. A cold wind was howling through the city center.

  He walked north along Great Victoria Street, toward the Europa. Ahead of him was a girl, clattering toward him along the pavement, hands pushed deeply into the pockets of a black leather coat, a handbag over her shoulder. He had seen her somewhere in the Europa—in the bar, maybe, or pushing a cleaning cart down a hall. She looked straight ahead. The Belfast stare, he thought. No one in this town ever seemed to look at anyone, least of all on the empty pavements of city center late at night.

  When the girl was about twenty feet in front of him, she appeared to stumble over a grate in the pavement. She fell heavily, spilling the contents of her handbag. Michael moved forward quickly and knelt beside her.

  "Are you all right?" he asked.

  "Yeah," the girl said. "Just a wee spill—nothing serious."

  She sat up and began picking up her things.

  "Let me help you," Michael said.

  "It's not necessary," she said. "I'll be fine."

  Michael heard a car accelerate on Great Victoria Street. He turned around and spotted a midsize Nissan speeding toward him, headlights doused. It was then that he felt something hard pressing against the small of his back.

  "Get in the fucking car, Mr. Osbourne," the girl said calmly, "or I'll put a bullet through your spine, so help me God."

  The car skidded to a halt next to the curb, and the rear door flew open. Seated in the back were two men. Both wore balaclavas. One of them jumped out, pushed Michael into the car, and then climbed in next to him. The car accelerated rapidly, leaving the girl behind.

  When they were clear of the city center, the two men forced Michael to the floor and began beating him with their fists and the butts of their guns. He wrapped his arms around his head and face, trying to shield himself from the blows, but it was no good. He saw flashing lights, heard ringing in his ears, and blacked out.

  18

  COUNTY ARMAGH, NORTHERN IRELAND

  Michael came awake suddenly. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious. They had moved him into the trunk of the car. He opened his eyes but saw nothing but blackness; they had placed a sack of black cloth over his head. He closed his eyes again and took stock of his injuries. The men who had assaulted him were not the kind of professionals who could beat a man half to death without leaving a mark. Michael's face felt bruised and swollen, and he could taste dried blood around his mouth. He couldn't breathe through his nose, and his skull hurt in a dozen different places. Several ribs were broken, so even a shallow breath caused excruciating pain. His abdomen ached, and his groin was swollen.

  Because of the hood, the rest of Michael's senses were suddenly alive. He could hear everything taking place in the car: the groan of springs in the seats, the music on the car radio, the hard edges of spoken Gaelic. They could have been talking about the weather or where they planned to dump his body, and Michael wouldn't have known the difference.

  For several minutes the car traveled at speed over a smooth road. Michael knew it was raining, because he could feel the hiss of wet asphalt beneath him. After a while—twenty minutes, Michael guessed—the car made a 90-degree turn. Their speed decreased, and the surface of the road deteriorated. The terrain turned hilly. Every pothole, every bend in the road, every incline sen
t waves of pain from his scalp to his groin. Michael tried to think about something, anything, besides the pain.

  He thought about Elizabeth, about home. It would be early evening in New York. She was probably giving the children one last bottle before bed. For an instant he felt like a complete idiot that he had traded an idyllic life with Elizabeth for a kidnapping and beating in Northern Ireland. But it was defeatist, so he drove it from his mind.

  For the first time in many years, Michael thought of his mother. He supposed it was because at least part of him suspected he might not make it out of Northern Ireland alive. His memories of her were more like those of an old lover than of a mother: afternoons in Roman cafes, strolls along Mediterranean beaches, dinners in Grecian tavernas, a moonlight pilgrimage to the Acropolis. Sometimes his father would be gone for weeks at a time with no word. When he did come home he could say nothing of his work or where he had been. She punished him by speaking only Italian, a language that bewildered him. She also punished him by bringing strange men to her bed—a fact she never hid from Michael. She used to tease Michael that his real father was a rich Sicilian landowner, which accounted for Michael's olive skin, nearly black hair, and long narrow nose. Michael was never certain whether she was joking. The shared secret of her adultery created a mystical bond between them. She died of breast cancer when Michael was eighteen. Michael's father knew his wife and son had kept secrets from him; the old deceiver had been deceived. For a year after Alexandra's death, Michael and his father barely spoke.

  Michael wondered what had happened to Kevin Maguire. The penalty for betraying the IRA was swift and harsh: severe torture and a bullet in the back of the head. Then he thought, Did Maguire betray the IRA or did he betray me? He replayed the events of the evening. The two cars from the Europa, the red Escort and the blue Vauxhall. The two rendezvous sites Maguire had missed, the embankment on the River Lagan and the Botanic Gardens. He thought about Maguire himself—the chainsmoking, the sweating, the long journey down old roads. Had Maguire been jittery because he feared he was being watched? Or was he feeling guilty because he was setting up his old case officer?