The Marching Season Read online

  Fletcher wore a balaclava, a black jumpsuit, and rubber-soled black athletic shoes. As he padded along the footpath, the gravel crunched softly beneath his feet. He reached the French doors and tried the latch; it was locked. He took a half step back and rammed the butt of the Uzi through the pane nearest the latch. Shards of glass rained down on the stone floor.

  He was reaching through the empty pane when he heard footfalls on the gravel behind him. He removed his hand and placed it on the Uzi. He was about to spin around and fire when an English-accented voice said, "Drop the gun and put your hands on your head. There's a good lad."

  Fletcher quickly calculated the odds of winning the encounter with the man standing behind him. If he was Special Branch, Fletcher almost certainly possessed more firepower, though the Special Branch protective officers were notoriously good marksmen. He was wearing body armor beneath his jumpsuit and he could survive almost anything but a head shot. He also knew that if he was arrested he would probably spend his remaining years in an English jail.

  James Fletcher dropped suddenly into a crouch and pivoted, raising his gun to the firing position. He saw the man only for an instant, but he realized at once that he was not Special Branch. He was SAS, which meant they had all walked straight into a trap, the same trap the IRA had walked into several times with disastrous results.

  Fletcher also realized he had just made a fatal miscalculation.

  The soldier's gun made no sound other than a dull clicking. He knew it had fired, though, because he could see the muzzle flash. The rounds shredded his jumpsuit and pierced his body armor, shattering his spine and ripping a gaping hole in the muscle of his heart. He fell backward, crashing through the French doors, and collapsed onto the floor of the orangery.

  The SAS man appeared before him a few seconds later. He bent over Fletcher and brusquely grabbed this throat, searching for a pulse. Then he snatched up the Uzi and moved away as James Fletcher died.

  Edward Mills heard the sound of shattering glass as he raced across the ruins surrounding St. Margaret's Church. He still had the lean, lightly muscled physique that had made him a champion cross-country runner at school, and he scampered easily across the piles of stones and low walls of the ruins. Like Fletcher he wore a black jumpsuit and a balaclava. Ahead stood St. Margaret's, looming over the graveyard. Mills raced along an ancient footpath leading from the village to the back of the church.

  He had never done anything like this in his life, yet he felt surprisingly calm. He was a member of the Orange Order—his father had been the standard-bearer for his lodge in Portadown, and so had his grandfather—but he had avoided the paramilitaries until the previous summer. It was then that the army and the RUC had prevented the Orange Order from marching along the Catholic Garvaghy Road in Portadown. Like most Orangemen, Mills believed he had an absolute right to march along the Queen's highway any time he pleased, regardless of what the Catholics might think. To protest the blockade he had remained in the fields around Drumcree church for six weeks. Gavin Spencer approached Mills there, in the sloppy makeshift campground at Drumcree, and asked him to join the Ulster Freedom Brigade.

  Now he sprinted across the old graveyard, picking his way through headstones and crosses. He was nearing the lych-gate, running effortlessly, when he felt a sharp pain in his left shin. His legs became entangled, and he crashed heavily to the ground, facedown. He tried to regain his footing, but a second later a man leaped onto his back, hit him twice on the back of the head, and clasped a gloved hand over his mouth. Mills felt himself losing consciousness.

  "If you so much as twitch or grunt, I'll put a bullet in the back of your head," the man said, and by the calm tone of voice Edward Mills knew the threat was not idle. He also felt the sickening realization that they had walked straight into a trap. The man tried to pull the Uzi from his grasp. Foolishly, Mills resisted. The man drove an elbow into the back of his head, and a second later Edward Mills blacked out.

  Alex Craig and Lennie West raced across the flat, open grass of the deer park toward the east wing of Hartley Hall. The two men were veterans of the UVF, and they had worked together many times before. They moved silently, side by side, guns at the ready. They reached the end of the deer park and arrived at the gravel approach to the east wing. Behind them, a male voice called out, "Stop, drop your weapons, and place your hands on your heads!"

  Craig and West froze, but their hands remained wrapped around their Uzis.

  "Drop the guns, now!" the voice repeated.

  Camping on the beach near Blakeney before the operation, Craig and West had decided that if there was trouble they would rather fight than be taken into custody. They looked at each other.

  "Looks like we've been set up," Craig whispered. "For God and Ulster, eh, Lennie?"

  West nodded and said, "I'll take the one behind us."

  "Right."

  West fell to the ground, rolled over, and started firing blindly in the darkness. Alex Craig fell to his stomach and fired wildly at the east wing, shattering glass. A second later he saw the reply in one of the shattered windows, the muzzle flash of a silenced submachine gun.

  West saw the same thing, low in the deep grass of the deer park, but it was too late. A burst of rounds obliterated his head in a flash of blood and brain tissue.

  Craig had no idea what had happened to his comrade. He turned his fire on the gunman in the window, but a second appeared, and then a third. He realized that West's gun had fallen silent. He turned and saw a headless corpse lying next to him on the gravel.

  He emptied the first clip, shoved another into the Uzi, and started firing again. A few seconds later the gunman inside the mansion found his mark, as did the man behind him in the deer park. Craig's body was torn apart by gunfire. His final shots, fired by a spasm in his dying hands, shattered the magnificent clock in the cupola of the east wing, freezing the hands at 4:01.

  Gavin Spencer, sprinting across the gravel drive toward the south porch, heard the intense firefight in the deer park. For an instant he considered turning away and heading back to the sanctuary of the North Wood. He had no idea what had just happened to any of his men. Had they penetrated the mansion? Had the Special Branch bodyguards stopped them?

  He paused for a moment, mind racing, breath ragged. He listened for more gunfire but heard nothing except wind and rain. He started running again. He passed between the ornate columns of the south porch and leaned against the door.

  Again, Spencer paused to listen. The gunfire seemed to have stopped for good. The door was locked. He took a step back and opened fire, closing his eyes against the shower of splintered wood. He drove his foot against the door, and it crashed open. Spencer stepped into the entrance hall and paused, Uzi at the ready.

  A figure appeared in the doorway to the great hall: tall, broad shoulders, helmet, and night-vision glasses. SAS, Spencer thought, no question. He spun around and took aim with the Uzi. The SAS man tried to fire his own weapon, but it jammed.

  He reached for a handgun, holstered beneath his armpit, but Spencer fired a burst from his Uzi.

  The gunfire blew the soldier off his feet. Spencer moved forward and snatched the handgun from the holster. He crossed the great hall and started up the staircase.

  The radio operator in the command center said calmly, "Base to Alpha Five-three-four, base to Alpha Five-three-four, can you hear me? Repeat, can you hear me?"

  He turned around and looked at Michael.

  "He's off the air, Mr. Osbourne. I think we have a Brigade gunman loose in the house."

  "Where's the closest SAS man?"

  "Still in the east wing."

  Michael removed the Browning automatic from his coat pocket. He pulled the slider, chambering the first round.

  "Get him up here, now!"

  Michael slipped through the doorway, into the darkened corridor, and closed the door behind him. He heard Gavin Spencer, clambering up the great staircase, and crouched, holding the Browning with both hands, arms
extended. A few seconds later he spotted Spencer, mounting the last flight of stairs.

  "Drop the gun, now!" Michael yelled.

  Gavin Spencer turned and leveled his Uzi in Michael's direction. Michael fired two shots. The first sailed past Spencer and shattered one of the classical busts along the staircase. The second hit Spencer in the left shoulder and drove him back.

  Spencer kept hold of the Uzi and fired a burst along the corridor. Michael, armed only with the Browning and with nowhere to take cover, was no match for a terrorist with an Uzi. He turned the knob of the door behind him'and dived back into the command center.

  He slammed the door and locked it.

  "Get down!"

  Graham Seymour and the other officers in the room hit the floor as Gavin Spencer, standing outside in the corridor, fired through the wall and the door.

  Each bedroom on the wing was connected to the adjoining room by a communicating doorway. Michael ran to the doorway and entered the next room. He repeated the move twice more, until he found himself in the Chinese bedroom.

  Outside, in the corridor, he could hear Spencer, breathing heavily, obviously in pain. Michael crossed the room and leaned against the wall next to the doorway.

  Spencer fired a short burst from the Uzi, splintering the door, and kicked it open. As he stepped into the room Michael struck him in the side of the head with the butt of his Browning.

  Spencer buckled but did not fall.

  Michael hit him a second time.

  Spencer fell to the floor, and the Uzi tumbled from his grasp.

  Michael leaped on top of him, clutching Spencer's throat with one hand and holding the Browning to his head with the other. Outside in the corridor he could hear the clatter of the approaching SAS men.

  "Don't move a fucking muscle," Michael said.

  Spencer tried to throw him off. Michael pressed the barrel of the Browning into the wound in Spencer's shoulder. Spencer screamed in pain and lay still.

  Two SAS men pounded into the room, guns trained on Spencer. Graham Seymour arrived a few seconds later. Michael ripped the balaclava from Spencer's head. He smiled as he recognized the face.

  "Oh, my goodness," Michael said, looking at Graham. "Look who we have here."

  "Gavin, darling," Graham said lazily. "So glad you could drop by."

  Rebecca Wells watched it all unfold from the blind in the North Wood. The gunfire had ended, and the night was filled with the sound of distant sirens. The first police cars raced along the entrance road, followed by a pair of ambulances. The men had walked straight into a trap, and it was her fault.

  She tried to control her anger and think clearly. The British had certainly been watching them the entire time. There were probably agents in the campgrounds, agents who had followed her as she reconnoitered Hartley Hall. She understood that she had few options now. If she went back to the caravan or tried to hide in the North Wood, she would be arrested.

  She had three hours before first light—three hours to get as far from the Norfolk Coast as possible. The Vauxhall was no good; it was back at the caravan, almost certainly being watched by the police.

  If she was to escape Norfolk, she had only one choice.

  She had to walk.

  She picked up her rucksack. Inside was her money, her maps, and her Walther automatic. Norwich lay twenty miles to the south. She could be there by midday. She could purchase a change of clothing, check into a hotel to clean herself up, buy hair dye at a chemist, and change her appearance. From Norwich she could take a bus farther south to Harwich, where there was a large European ferry terminal. She could take an overnight ferry to Holland and be on the Continent by morning.

  She removed the gun from her rucksack, pulled on her hood, and started walking.

  MARCH

  29

  AMSTERDAM « PARIS

  Amsterdam was a city Delaroche loved, but not even Am-sterdam, with its gabled houses and picturesque canals, could lift the gray fog of depression that had settled over him that winter. He had taken a flat in a house overlooking a small canal running between the Herengracht and the Singel. The rooms were large and airy, with vaulted windows and French doors that opened onto the water, but Delaroche kept the blinds drawn except when he was working.

  The flat was bare except for his easels and his bed and a large chair near the French doors where he sat and read late into most evenings. Two bicycles were propped against the wall in the entrance hall, an Italian sport racer, which he used for long rides in the flat Dutch countryside, and a German-made mountain bike for the cobblestones and bricks of central Amsterdam. He refused to keep them in the lockup outside the house as the rest of the tenants did; there was a huge black market for stolen bicycles in Amsterdam, even for the rickety one-speed coasters that most people rode. His mountain bike would not have survived more than a few minutes.

  Uncharacteristically, he had grown obsessed with his own face. Several times each day he would go into the bathroom and stare at his reflection in the glass. He had never been a vain man, but he hated what he saw now, because it offended his artistic sense of proportion and symmetry. Each day he made a pencil sketch of his face to document the slow healing process. At night, lying alone in his bed, he toyed with the collagen implants in his cheeks.

  Finally, the incisions healed and the swelling went down, and his features settled into a boring, rather ugly stew. Leroux, the plastic surgeon, had been right; Delaroche did not recognize himself anymore. Only the eyes were the same, sharp and distinct, but they were now surrounded by dullness and mediocrity.

  The security requirements of his trade had prevented Delaroche from painting his own face, but shortly after coming to Amsterdam he produced an intensely personal work of self-portraiture—a hideous man staring into a mirror and seeing a beautiful reflection staring back at him. The reflection was Delaroche before the surgery. He had to work from memory because he had no photographs of his old face. He kept the work for a few days, leaning against the wall of his studio, but paranoia eventually won out, and he shredded the canvas and burned it in the fireplace.

  Some nights, when he was bored or restless, Delaroche went to the nightclubs around the Leidseplein. Before, he had avoided bars and nightclubs because he tended to attract too much attention from women. Now he could sit for hours without being bothered.

  That morning he rose early and made coffee. He logged on to the computer, checked his E-mail, and read newspapers on-line until the German girl in his bed stirred.

  He had forgotten her name—something like Ingrid, maybe Eva. She had childbearing hips and heavy breasts. She had dyed her hair black to appear more sophisticated. Now, in the gray morning light, Delaroche could see she was a child, twenty at most. There was something of Astrid Vogel in her awkwardness. He felt angry with himself. He had seduced her for the challenge of it—like making a steep ascent on his bike at the end of a long ride—and now he just wanted her to leave.

  She rose and wrapped her body in a sheet.

  "Coffee?" she asked.

  "In the kitchen," he said, without looking up from his computer screen.

  She drank her coffee German style, with lots of heavy cream. She smoked one of Delaroche's cigarettes and eyed him silently as he read.

  "I have to go to Paris now," he said.

  "Take me with you."

  "No."

  He spoke quietly but firmly. Once, when he used that tone of voice, a girl like her might have been nervous or anxious to leave his presence, but she just stared at him over her coffee cup and smiled. He suspected it was his face.

  "I'm not finished with you," she said.

  "There isn't time."

  She pouted playfully.

  "When am I going to see you again?"

  "You're not."

  "Come on," she said. "I want to know more about you."

  "No, you don't," he said, shutting off the computer.

  She kissed him and padded away. Her clothes were strewn across the floor: ri
pped black jeans, a flannel lumberjack shirt, a black concert T-shirt with the name of a rock band that De-laroche had never heard of. When she finished dressing she stood before him and said, "Are you sure you won't take me to Paris?"

  "Quite sure," he said resolutely, but there was something about her that he liked. He said gently, "I'll be back tomorrow evening. Come at nine o'clock. I'll make you dinner."

  "I don't want dinner," she said. "I want you."

  Delaroche shook his head. "I'm too old for you."

  "You're not too old. Your body is wonderful, and you have an interesting face."

  "Interesting?"

  "Yes, interesting."

  She looked around the room at the canvases leaning against the walls.

  "Are you going to Paris to work?" she asked.

  "Yes," Delaroche said.

  Delaroche took a taxi to Amsterdam's Centraal Station and purchased a first-class ticket on the morning train to Paris. He bought newspapers at a gift shop in the terminal and read them as the train raced through the flat Dutch countryside into Belgium.

  The news that morning intrigued him. During the night a Protestant paramilitary group from Northern Ireland had tried to assassinate the American ambassador to Britain while he was spending the weekend at a country house in Norfolk. According to the newspapers, Special Branch agents had killed three members of the group and arrested two others. The alleged leader of the Ulster Freedom Brigade, a man named Kyle Blake, had been arrested in Portadown. Police were looking for a woman connected to the group.