The Marching Season Read online

  "How do I look?" she asked.

  "Your hair is too blond." Delaroche reached in the duffel bag and tossed her a ball cap. "Put this on."

  Delaroche telephoned downstairs and asked the valet to have the Volvo waiting. He drove west along P Street. There was a tourist map on the dashboard that Delaroche did not bother to open; the streets of Washington, like the waters of the Chesapeake, were engraved in his memory.

  He crossed into Georgetown and drove along the quiet tree-lined streets. It was considered the most glamorous neighborhood in Washington, with redbrick sidewalks and large Federal-style homes, but to Delaroche, whose eye was used to the canals and gabled houses of Amsterdam, it all seemed rather prosaic.

  He drove west on P Street until he reached Wisconsin Avenue. He headed south on Wisconsin, accompanied by the pounding beat of rap music vibrating from the gold BMW behind him. He turned onto N Street, and the madness of Wisconsin Avenue slowly dissipated behind them.

  The house was empty, just as Delaroche knew it would be. Ambassador Cannon was arriving from London the following afternoon. He was hosting a private dinner party for friends and family that evening. The next day he would take part in the conference on Northern Ireland at the White House, then attend a series of receptions in the evening hosted by the parties to the talks. It was all in the Director's dossier.

  Delaroche parked around the corner from the house, on Thirty-third Street. He placed a camera around his neck and strolled the quiet block, Rebecca on his arm, pausing now and again to gaze at the large brick townhouses with light spilling from their windows. It was rather like Amsterdam, he thought, the way people kept their curtains open and allowed passersby to gaze into their homes and assess their possessions.

  He had been there before; he knew the challenges that N Street posed to a man like him. There were no cafes in which to dawdle over coffee, no shops for diversionary purchases, no squares or parks to kill time without attracting attention—just large expensive homes, with nosy neighbors and security systems.

  They walked past the Osbournes' house. A black sedan was parked across the street. Seated behind the wheel was a man in a tan raincoat, reading the sports section of The Washington Post. So much for the Director's theory that Ambassador Cannon would be easy to kill while he was in Washington, Delaroche thought. The man hadn't even set foot in town yet, and already the house was under watch.

  Delaroche paused a block away and made photographs of the home where John Kennedy had lived when he was a senator from Massachusetts. A number of Cabinet secretaries lived in Georgetown; their homes were under constant surveillance. If the official was involved in national security, such as the secretary of state or the defense secretary, their bodyguards might even have a static post in a nearby apartment. But Delaroche felt confident that Douglas Cannon's security consisted entirely of the man in the tan raincoat—at least for now.

  He led Rebecca south on Thirty-first Street for a half block, until they reached an alley that ran behind the Osbournes' house. He peered into the half darkness; just as he suspected, it looked as if the back of the house was not under watch.

  Delaroche handed Rebecca a cellular telephone. "Stay here. Call me if there's trouble. If I'm not back in five minutes, leave and go back to the hotel. If you don't hear from me within a half hour, contact the Director and request an extraction."

  Rebecca nodded. Delaroche turned and set out down the alley. He paused behind the Osbournes' house, then deftly scaled the fence and dropped into a well-tended garden surrounding a small swimming pool. He looked overhead and followed the lines leading from the telephone pole in the alley to the point where they attached to the house. He crossed the garden and knelt in front of the telephone switch box at the back of the house. He unzipped the backpack and removed his tools and a flashlight. Holding the flashlight between his teeth, he loosened the screws holding the cover of the switch box in place and studied the configuration of the lines for a moment.

  There were two lines leading into the house, but Delaroche only had the equipment to tap one of them. He suspected one line was probably reserved for telephone calls, the other for a fax machine or modem. He reached inside the backpack again and withdrew a small electronic device. Attached to the Osbournes' telephone line, it would relay a high-frequency radio signal to Delaroche's cellular phone, allowing him to monitor the Osbournes' telephone calls. It took Delaroche only two minutes to install the device on the Osbournes' primary line and reattach the cover of the switch box.

  The second device would be much easier to install, since it required only a window. It was a bugging mechanism that, when attached to the exterior of a window, would detect the vibration of sound waves inside a structure and convert them back into audio. Delaroche attached the sensor pad to the lower portion of a window off the main living room. It was concealed by a shrub outside and an end table inside. He buried the converter and transmitter unit in a patch of mulch in the garden.

  Delaroche retraced his steps across the lawn. He tossed the backpack over the fence, then scaled it and dropped down into the alley. The two units he had just placed on the Osbournes' house had an effective range of two miles, which would allow him to monitor the Osbournes from the security of their hotel room at Dupont Circle.

  Rebecca was waiting for him at the end of the alley.

  "Let's go," he said.

  He took her by the hand and walked back to the Volvo.

  Delaroche sat in front of a receiver the size of a shoe box, testing the signal of the transmitter he had placed on the Osbournes' window. Rebecca was in the bathroom. He could hear the sound of water running into the basin. She had been there for more than an hour. Finally, the water stopped running and she came out, wearing a hotel bathrobe, her hair wrapped in a white towel like a sheikh. She lit one of his cigarettes and said, "Does it work?"

  "The transmitter is sending out a signal, but I won't be certain until there's someone in the house."

  "I'm hungry," she said.

  "Order some food from room service."

  "I want to go out."

  "It's better if we stay inside."

  "I've been trapped on boats for ten days. I want to go out."

  "Get dressed, and I'll take you out."

  "Close your eyes," she said, but Delaroche stood and turned to face her. He reached out and tugged at the towel around her head. Her hair was no longer an abrasive shade of blond; it was nearly black and shimmering with dampness. Suddenly, it was in sync with the rest of her features—her gray eyes, her luminous white skin, her oval face. He realized that she was a remarkably beautiful woman. Then he became angry; he wished he could hide in a bathroom with a bottle of elixir and emerge an hour later with his old face.

  She seemed to read his thoughts.

  "You have scars," she said, tracing a finger along the bottom of his jawline. "What happened?"

  "If you stay in this business too long a face can become a liability."

  Her finger had moved from his jawline to his cheekbone, and she was toying with the collagen implants just beneath the skin. "What did you look like before?" she asked.

  Delaroche raised his eyebrows and pondered her question for an instant. He thought, How would anyone describe his own appearance? If he said he had been beautiful once, before Maurice Leroux destroyed his face, she might think he was a liar. He sat down at the desk and removed a piece of hotel stationery and a pencil.

  "Go away for a few minutes," he said.

  She went into the bathroom again, closed the door, and switched on the hair drier. He worked quickly, the pencil scratching over the paper. When he finished, he appraised his own features rather dispassionately, as if they belonged to a creature of his imagination.

  He slipped the self-portrait beneath the bathroom door. The hair drier stopped whining. Rebecca came out, holding De-laroche's old face in her hands. She looked at him, then at the image on the paper. She kissed the portrait and dropped it onto the floor. Then she kissed Delaroc
he.

  "Who was she, Jean-Paul?"

  "Who?"

  "The woman you were thinking about while you were making love to me."

  "I was thinking about you."

  "Not all the time. I'm not angry, Jean-Paul. It's not as if—"

  She stopped herself before she could finish her thought. Delaroche wondered what she might have said. She lay on her back, her head resting on his abdomen, her dark hair spread across his chest. Street light streamed through the open curtains and fell upon her long body. Her face was flushed and scratched from lovemaking, but the rest of her body was bone white in the lamplight. It was the skin of someone who had rarely seen the sun; Delaroche doubted she had ever set foot outside the British Isles before she had been driven into hiding.

  "Was she beautiful? And don't lie to me anymore."

  "Yes," he said.

  "What was her name?"

  "Her name was Astrid."

  "Astrid what?"

  "Astrid Vogel."

  "I recall a woman named Astrid Vogel who belonged to the Red Army Faction," Rebecca said. "She left Germany and went into hiding after she murdered a German police official."

  "That was my Astrid," Delaroche said, tracing his finger along the edge of Rebecca's breast. "But Astrid didn't kill the German policeman. I killed him. Astrid just paid the price."

  "So you're German?"

  Delaroche shook his head.

  "What are you, then? What's your real name?"

  But he ignored her question. His fingers moved from her breast to the edge of her rib cage. Rebecca's abdomen reacted involuntarily to his touch, drawing in sharply. Delaroche stroked the white skin of her stomach and the tops of her thighs. Finally, she took his hand and placed it between her legs. Her eyes closed. A gust of wind moved the curtains, and her skin prickled with goose bumps. She tried to draw the bedspread over her body but Delaroche pushed it away.

  "There were things in the houseboat in Amsterdam that belonged to a woman," she said softly, eyes closed. "Astrid lived on that boat, didn't she."

  "Yes, she did."

  "Did you live there with her?"

  "For a while."

  "Did you make love in the bed beneath the skylight?"

  "Rebecca—"

  "It's all right," she said. "You won't hurt my feelings."

  "Yes, we did."

  "What happened to her?"

  "She was killed."

  "When?"

  "Last year."

  Rebecca pushed away his hand and sat up. "What happened?"

  "We were working together on something here in America, and it turned out badly."

  "Who killed her?"

  Delaroche hesitated a moment; the whole thing had gone too far already. He knew he should shut it down, but for some reason he wanted to tell her more. Perhaps Vladimir was right. A man who sees ghosts can no longer behave like a professional. . . .

  "Michael Osbourne," he said. "Actually, his wife killed her."

  "Why?"

  "Because we were sent here to kill Michael Osbourne." He paused for a moment, his eyes flickering about her. "Sometimes, in this business, things don't go as planned."

  "Why were you hired to kill Osbourne?"

  "Because he knew too much about one of the Society's operations."

  "What operation?"

  "The downing of Trans Atlantic Flight 002 last year."

  "I thought it was shot down by that Arab group, the Sword of Gaza."

  "It was shot down at the behest of an American defense contractor named Mitchell Elliott. The Society made it appear as though the Sword of Gaza was involved so Elliott's company could sell a missile defense system to the American government. Osbourne suspected this, so I was hired by the Director to eliminate everyone involved in the operation, as well as Osbourne."

  "Who actually shot down the plane?"

  "A Palestinian named Hassan Mahmoud."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because I was there that night. Because I killed him when it was over."

  She drew away from him. Delaroche could see real fear on her face and feel the bed shaking gently with her trembling. She drew the blanket to her breast to hide her body from him. He stared at her, his face utterly expressionless.

  "My God," she said. "You're a monster."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "There were more than two hundred innocent people on that plane."

  "And what about the innocent people that your bombers killed in London and Dublin?"

  "We didn't do it for money," she snarled.

  "You had a cause," he said contemptuously.

  "That's right."

  "A cause you believe is just."

  "A cause I know is just," she said. "You'll kill anyone as long as the price is right."

  "My God, you really are a stupid woman, aren't you."

  She tried to slap him, but he caught her hand and held on to it, easily resisting her efforts to pull away.

  "Why do you think the Society is willing to help you?" Delaroche said. "Because they believe in the sacred rights of Protestants in Northern Ireland? Of course not. Because they think it will advance their own interests. Because they think that it will make them money. History has passed you by, Rebecca. The Protestants have had their day in Northern Ireland, and now it's over. No amount of bombing, no amount of killing, is ever going to turn back the clock."

  "If you believe that, why are you doing this?" "I don't believe in anything. This is what I do. I've killed in the name of every failed cause in Europe. Yours is just the latest"— he let go of her and she drew away, rubbing her hand as if it had touched something evil—"and I hope the last."

  "I should have kept walking that day in Amsterdam." "You're probably right. But now you're here, and you're stuck with me, and if you do precisely as I say, you might actually survive. You'll never see Northern Ireland again, but at least you'll be alive."

  "Somehow, I doubt that," she said. "You're going to kill me when this is all over, aren't you?" "No, I'm not going to kill you." "You probably killed Astrid Vogel, too." "I didn't kill Astrid, and I'm not going to kill you." He pulled away the blanket and exposed her body to the light. He held out his hand to her, but she remained still.

  "Take my hand," Delaroche said. "I won't hurt you. I give you my word."

  Rebecca took his hand. He pulled her to him and kissed her mouth. She resisted for a moment; then she surrendered, kissing him, clawing at his skin as if she were drowning in his arms. When she guided him into her body, she suddenly went very still, staring at Delaroche with an animal directness that unnerved him.

  "I like your other face better," she said.

  "So do I."

  "When this is over, maybe we can go back to the doctor who did this and he can make your face like it was before."

  "I'm afraid that's not possible," he said.

  She seemed to understand exactly what he was saying.

  "If you're not going to kill me," she said, "then why did you tell me your secrets?" 1 m not sure.

  "Who are you, Jean-Paul?"

  36

  WASHINGTON

  The following morning Michael and Elizabeth flew from New York to Washington, along with the children and Maggie. They separated at National Airport. Michael took a chauffeured government sedan to the White House to brief National Security Adviser William Bristol on Northern Ireland; Elizabeth, Maggie, and the children crowded into a car-service Lincoln for the ride into Georgetown.

  Elizabeth had not been back to the large redbrick Federal on N Street in more than a year. She loved the old house, but climbing the curved brick steps she was suddenly overwhelmed with bad memories. She thought of the long struggle with her own body to have children. She thought of the afternoon Astrid Vogel had come here to take her hostage so the assassin called October could murder her husband.

  "Are you all right, Elizabeth?" Maggie asked.

  Elizabeth wondered how long she had been standing there, key in hand, un
able to unlock the door.

  "Yes, I'm fine, Maggie. I was just thinking about something."

  The alarm chirped as she pushed back the front door. She punched in the disarm code, and it fell silent. Michael had turned the place into a fortress, but she would never feel completely safe here.

  She helped Maggie get the children settled, then carried her suitcase upstairs to the bedroom. She was unzipping the bag when the doorbell rang. She walked downstairs and peered through the peephole. Outside was a tall brown-haired man in a blue suit and tan raincoat.

  "Can I help you?" she said, without opening the door.

  "My name is Brad Heyworth, Mrs. Osbourne. I'm the Diplomatic Security Service agent assigned to watch your house."

  Elizabeth opened the door. "DSS? But my father doesn't arrive from London for another six hours."

  "Actually, we've been watching the house for a couple of days now, Mrs. Osbourne."

  "Why?"

  "After the incident in Britain, we decided it was probably best to err on the side of caution."

  "Are you alone?"

  "For now, but when the ambassador arrives we'll add a second man to the detail."

  "That's reassuring," she said. "Would you like to come inside?"

  "No, thank you, Mrs. Osbourne, I need to stay out here."

  "Can I get you anything?"

  "I'm fine," he said. "I just wanted to let you know that we're around."

  "Thank you, Agent Heyworth."

  Elizabeth closed the door and watched as the DSS man walked down the front steps and got back in his car. She was glad he was there. She went upstairs and sat down at the desk in Michael's old study. She made a series of brief telephone calls: to Ridgewell's catering, to the valet service, to her office in New York to check messages. Then she spent another hour returning calls.

  Maria, the cleaning lady, arrived at noon. Elizabeth dressed in a nylon track suit and went outside. She bounced down the front steps, waved to Brad Heyworth, and jogged down the brick sidewalk of N Street.