The Marching Season Read online

  He grabbed a stack of files from his desk and placed them in his leather briefcase. He removed his mackintosh from the hook behind the door and went out. He stopped in the bathroom and looked himself over in the mirror.

  Sometimes he wondered what she saw in him. He tried to arrange his hair to conceal the bald spot but only managed to make things worse. She said she liked balding men, said they looked smarter, more mature. She's too young for me, he thought, too young and far too pretty. But he couldn't help himself. For the first time in his life he was in an exciting sexual relationship. He couldn't stop now.

  Outside it was raining, and darkness had fallen on Grosvenor Square. He put up an umbrella against the rain and picked his way along the crowded pavements to the Park Lane. He stood outside the restaurant and watched her through the window for a moment. She was tall and fit, with rich black hair, an oval face, and gray eyes. Her white blouse could not conceal her large rounded breasts. She was a wonderful lover; she seemed to know his every fantasy. Each afternoon at work he stared at the clock, anticipating the moment he could see her again.

  McDaniels went inside the restaurant and sat down at a table in the bar. When she spotted him she winked and mouthed the words, "I'll be there in a minute."

  She brought him a glass of white wine a moment later. He touched her hand as she placed the glass on the table.

  "I've missed you terribly, darling."

  "I thought you'd never come," she said. "But I can't talk long—Riccardo's having a complete psychotic episode tonight. If he sees me talking to you he'll sack me."

  "You're just being friendly to a regular customer."

  She smiled seductively and said, "Very friendly."

  "I need to see you."

  "I'm off at ten."

  "I can't wait that long."

  "I'm afraid you have no choice."

  She winked and walked away. McDaniels drank his wine and watched her as she moved from table to table, taking orders, delivering food, and interacting with the customers. She was the kind of woman that men noticed. She was too attractive and too talented to be waiting tables. He knew she would find her own place in the world eventually, and then she would leave him.

  McDaniels finished his wine, left a ten-pound note on the table, and went out. He realized it was too much money for a single glass of wine. She'll get the idea I think she's a whore, he thought. He considered going back inside and leaving less money, but he knew that would look even more peculiar. McDaniels walked away, thinking that if she ever left him he might very well kill himself.

  McDaniels took his time going home. The rain eased up, so he walked, enjoying the city and the floating sensation from the wine and spending even a few minutes with Rachel. He had never felt anything like obsession before, but he knew it must feel something like this. It was beginning to affect his work. He was drifting off in meetings, losing his train of thought in mid-sentence. People were beginning to talk, to ask questions. He didn't care, really. He had lived without the love of a woman his entire life. He was going to enjoy the sensation while it lasted.

  He ate supper in a pub off the Brompton Road. He read the newspapers, and for a few minutes Rachel managed not to intrude on his thoughts. But after a while she was there again, like a pleasant piece of music running round his head. He imagined her in bed, her mouth open in pleasure, her eyes closed. Then the silly fantasies took over: the wedding ceremony in an English country church, the cottage in the Cotswolds, the children. It was a ludicrous image, but he enjoyed the idea of it. He had fallen hopelessly in love, but Rachel didn't seem like the marrying kind. She wanted to write. She cherished her freedom—her intellectual freedom and her sexual freedom. The first time he mentioned marriage she would probably run as fast as she could.

  McDaniels drifted through the quiet side streets of South Kensington. He had a pleasant two-bedroom flat on the first floor of a Georgian terraced house. He let himself in and flipped through the afternoon post. He took a long shower and changed into a pair of khaki trousers and a cotton pullover.

  He used the spare bedroom as a study. He watched the Nine O'Clock News while he worked his way through a stack of papers from the office. Ambassador Cannon had a busy day tomorrow: a meeting with the foreign secretary, a luncheon with a group of British business leaders, an interview with a reporter from The Times. When he finished he placed his papers in a manila file folder and placed the folder back in his briefcase.

  Shortly before ten-thirty the building's intercom buzzed softly. McDaniels pressed the button and said playfully, "Who's there?"

  "It's me, darling," she said. "Were you expecting one of your other lovers?"

  It was a little game they played: jokes about other lovers, feigned jealousy. It was amazing how quickly their relationship had progressed.

  "You're the only woman I've ever had in my entire life."

  "Liar."

  "Hang up and I'll buzz you in."

  He smoothed his hair while he waited for her to arrive. He heard footsteps outside in the hall, but he didn't want to appear overeager to see her, so he waited for her to knock. When he pulled back the door she stepped into his arms and kissed him on the mouth. Her lips parted and her silken tongue slid over his. She pulled away slightly and said, "I've been waiting to do that all night."

  Preston McDaniels smiled. "How did I get so lucky to find someone like you?"

  "I'm the lucky one."

  "Can I get you something to drink?"

  "Actually, I have a very serious problem, and you're the only one who can help me."

  She took his hand and led him to the bedroom, unbuttoning her blouse as she moved. She pushed him down on the end of the bed and pulled his face to her breasts.

  "Oh, my God," he groaned.

  "Hurry, darling," she said. "Please hurry."

  Rebecca Wells awakened at three o'clock in the morning. She lay very still for several minutes, listening to McDaniels's breathing. He was a heavy sleeper naturally, and he had made love to her twice tonight. She sat up, eased her way out of bed, and crossed the floor. Her blouse lay on the floor where she had left it. She scooped it up, let herself out, and softly closed the door.

  She pulled on the blouse as she crossed the hall and entered his study. She closed that door too and sat down at the desk. The briefcase was on the floor, unlocked. She opened it and picked through the contents until she found what she was looking for: the folder containing details of Ambassador Douglas Cannon's schedule for the following day.

  She took a notepad from his desk and began scribbling furiously. It was all there—the time of each meeting, the method of transportation, the route. She finished copying the schedule and quickly flipped through the rest of the papers to see if there was anything interesting. When she was done she returned the file to its place in the briefcase and switched off the light.

  She slipped into the hallway and entered the bathroom. She closed the door and turned on the light. She threw water on her face and stared at her reflection in the mirror.

  She had made a promise to herself when the IRA killed Ronnie: She would never marry, and she would never take another man to their bed. She had thought it was going to be a difficult vow to keep, but the hatred that filled her heart after his death left no room for any other emotion, especially love for another man. A few men from Portadown had tried to pursue her, but she had pushed them all away. Inside the Brigade, the men knew better than to waste their time.

  She thought of Preston McDaniels inside her body and wanted to vomit. She told herself it was for an important cause, the future of the Protestant way of life in Northern Ireland. In a way she almost felt sorry for McDaniels. He was a decent man, kind and gentle, but he had fallen for the oldest trick in the book—the honey trap. Tonight he had said he was in love with her. She dreaded what would happen to him when, inevitably, he learned that she had betrayed him.

  She drank a glass of water and flushed the toilet; then she shut off the light and slipped back
into bed.

  "I thought you'd never come back," McDaniels said softly.

  She nearly screamed, but she managed to keep her composure. "I was just a little thirsty."

  "Bring any for me?" "Sorry, darling."

  "Actually, there's something else I want." He rolled on top of her. "You," he said. "Can you?"

  He pulled her hand to his groin.

  "Well, well," she said. "We should do something about that." He thrust deeply into her body.

  Rebecca Wells closed her eyes and thought of her dead husband.

  22

  COUNTY TYRONE, NORTHERN IRELAND

  Shortly after Northern Ireland exploded into violence in 1969, British Intelligence decided that the best way to combat terrorism was to track the movements of individual terrorists. Known members of paramilitary organizations are routinely followed and monitored by British Intelligence and by E4, the special surveillance unit of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Sightings and movements are fed into a computer at army intelligence headquarters in Belfast. If a terrorist suddenly vanishes from a watch list, the computer automatically raises a red flag; the security forces assume he is probably involved in an operation.

  Surveillance of such magnitude requires thousands of officers and advanced technology. Trouble spots, like the Falls Road in Belfast, are covered by a multitude of video cameras. The army maintains a post atop the towering Divis Flats. During the day, soldiers scan the streets with high-powered binoculars, looking for known members of the IRA; at night they search with infrared night-vision glasses. The security services place tracking devices in cars. They place listening devices and miniature video cameras in homes, pubs, automobiles, and hay sheds. They monitor telephones. They have even planted bugs in individual weapons to track their movements throughout the province. Sophisticated intelligence aircraft patrol the skies, looking for human activity at night where there should be none. Small pilotless drones perform low-level reconnaissance. Sensors are hidden in trees to detect human movement.

  But despite all the high-tech equipment, much of the monitoring must be done the old-fashioned way, with man-on-man surveillance. It is dangerous work, sometimes deadly. Undercover officers routinely patrol the Falls Road area of Belfast. They hide in attics and on rooftops for days on subsistence rations, photographing their quarry. In the countryside they hide in holes, behind bushes, atop trees. In the lexicon of Northern Ireland intelligence, this practice is known as "digging in." It was the method chosen to monitor the tumbledown farmhouse outside the village of Cranagh in the Sperrin Mountains.

  Graham Seymour arrived from London on the sixth day of the operation. For their static post they had chosen a clump of gorse, surrounded by a stand of tall beech trees, on a hillside about a half mile from the house. A pair of E4 officers handled the technical equipment: long-lens and infrared cameras, long-range directional microphones. They worked as quietly as altar boys and looked as young. They playfully introduced themselves as Marks and Sparks.

  Over the years the IRA had ambushed and killed dozens of intelligence officers on surveillance; even though the targets were suspected Loyalists they took no chances. Two commandos from the elite Special Air Service, the SAS, formed a protective perimeter around Graham and Marks and Sparks. They wore camouflage gear and blacked out their faces with greasepaint. Twice, Graham nearly tripped over them while relieving himself in the gorse. He longed for a cigarette, but smoking wasn't allowed. After three days of eating nothing but special high-calorie sludge he was desperate for even Helen's appalling cooking. At night, sleeping on the damp freezing hillside, he silently cursed Michael Osbourne's name.

  It was clear something wasn't right about the farmhouse in the small glen below them. A pair of brothers called Dalton owned it. They tended a small flock of scrawny sheep and a few dozen chickens. Each day, once in the morning and again at dusk, they slowly walked the edge of their land, as if looking for signs of trouble.

  They received their first visitor on the tenth night.

  He arrived in a small Nissan sedan. Marks and Sparks fired away rapidly with their infrared cameras, while Graham peered down toward the farmhouse through night-vision binoculars. He saw a tall, powerfully built man with a head of unruly hair, carrying a tennis bag over his right shoulder.

  "What do you think?" Graham asked no one in particular.

  "He's trying to make it look light," Marks said, "but the shoulder strap is straining."

  "He's definitely not carrying rackets and balls in that thing," said Sparks.

  Graham picked up a small radio and contacted the RUC station in Cookstown, fifteen miles to the southeast.

  "We have company. Stand by for further instructions."

  The visitor remained inside the farmhouse for twenty minutes. Marks and Sparks tried to eavesdrop on the activity inside the house, but all they could hear was Bach blaring from a tinny hi-fi.

  "You recognize the piece?" Marks asked.

  "Concerto Number Five in D major," Sparks said.

  "Lovely isn't it?"

  "Quite."

  Graham was peering into the glen through infrared binoculars.

  "He's leaving," he said.

  "Short stay for this time of night," Marks said.

  "Maybe he had to relieve himself," Sparks said.

  "I'd say he probably relieved himself of a few weapons," Marks said. "That bag looks a bit lighter now, don't you think?"

  Graham picked up the radio again and raised Cookstown.

  "The subject is heading east toward Mount Hamilton. Make it look like a routine stop. Plant a report on the radio of a security alert in the area. Send a few good guys through there so he doesn't feel like we're singling him out. I'll be down in a few minutes."

  The man in the Nissan sedan was Gavin Spencer, the operations chief of the Ulster Freedom Brigade, and the tennis bag—now empty and lying on the seat next to him—had contained a shipment of Israeli-made Uzi machine guns from an arms dealer in the Middle East. The weapons were to be used for the assassination of Ambassador Douglas Cannon. For now they were hidden inside a stone wall in the cellar of the farmhouse.

  Gavin Spencer had selected his team and briefed them on their mission. Rebecca Wells had gained access to the ambassador's schedule in London and was filing regular reports. All they needed now was the right moment, the moment when Cannon was most vulnerable. They would get only one chance. If they made a mistake—if they failed—the British and the Americans would tighten security even further, and they would never be able to get close to him again.

  Spencer sped along the winding B47, through the darkened village of Mount Hamilton and then back onto the open roadway. A wave of relief passed over him. The weapons were out of his car and safely inside the walls of the farmhouse. If they had been discovered in his possession he would have been given a one-way ticket to the Maze. He pressed the accelerator, and the Nissan responded, rising and falling over the rolling roadway. He switched on the radio, hoping to find some music, but a news bulletin on Ulster radio caught his attention. A security alert had been declared in the Sperrin Mountains between Omagh and Cookstown.

  Three miles later he spotted the blue flashing lights of an RUC patrol car and the bulky outline of two army troop carriers. An RUC officer stood in the middle of the road, waving his flashlight for Spencer to pull to the side. Spencer stopped and rolled down his window.

  "Security alert in the area tonight, sir," the RUC man said. "Mind if I ask where you're heading tonight?"

  "Home to Portadown," Spencer said.

  "What brings you up here?"

  "Visiting a friend."

  "Where's the friend?"

  "Cranagh."

  "May I see your driver's permit, sir?"

  Spencer handed it over. A second car braked to a halt behind him. Spencer could hear another officer asking the driver the same questions he had been asked. The RUC man looked over the permit and handed it back to Spencer.

  "All right, sir," he said. "
We're just going to have a look inside your car. Mind stepping out, sir?"

  Spencer got out. The RUC man climbed in and pulled the car behind the troop carriers. A moment later the second car disappeared behind the troop trucks. The motorist was a squat, powerfully built man with short-cropped hair and a graying mustache. He stood next to Spencer with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.

  "What the fuck's this all about?" he said.

  "They said it's a security alert."

  "Fuckin' IRA, no doubt."

  "Suppose so," Spencer said.

  The man lit a cigarette and gave one to Spencer. It started to rain. Gavin Spencer smoked and tried to appear as calm as possible while the RUC and the army tore apart his car.

  Graham Seymour stood behind the army truck while a team of soldiers and police officers searched the Nissan. They used a portable imager to peer beneath the seat covers for hidden weapons. They tested for residue from explosives. They searched beneath the undercarriage and beneath the hood. They unscrewed the door panels and looked beneath the carpeting. They opened the trunk and picked through the contents.

  After ten minutes one of the RUC men gestured silently for Seymour to come over. Inside the spare tire, wrapped in a greasy rag, they had discovered a few suspicious-looking papers.

  Graham borrowed the officer's flashlight and shone it on the papers. He flipped through them quickly, committing as many of the details as he could to memory, and handed them back to the officer.

  "Place them where you found them/' he said. "Exactly the way you found them."

  The RUC man nodded and did as he was told.

  "Hide a tracking beacon in the car and let him go," Graham said. "And then get me back to Belfast as fast as you fucking can. We've got a rather serious problem, I'm afraid."