The Marching Season Read online

  Blake pulled on a coat and kissed her cheek. "Keep the door locked, and don't wait up."

  Kyle Blake was a printer by trade, and the family's only vehicle, a small Ford van, bore the name of his Portadown shop. Reflex-ively, he checked the undercarriage for explosives before getting in and starting the engine. He drove through the Brownstown estate. The giant face of Billy Wright, the fanatic Protestant killer murdered by Catholic gunmen in the Maze prison, stared from the side of a terraced house. Blake kept his eyes straight ahead. He turned onto the Armagh Road and followed a British troop carrier toward central Portadown.

  He switched on Radio Ulster, which was running a special bulletin on the claim of responsibility by the Ulster Freedom Brigade. The RUC had declared security alerts in sections of County Antrim and County Down. Motorists were warned to expect delays due to roadblocks. Other places have traffic updates on the radio, Kyle Blake thought; Ulster has security alerts. He switched off the radio, listening to the wipers beat a steady rhythm against the rain.

  Kyle Blake had never been to university, but he was a student of Northern Ireland's history. He laughed when he read that the troubles of the province began in 1969; Protestants and Catholics had been killing each other in the north of County Armagh for centuries. Empires had risen and fallen, two world wars had been fought, man had gone to the moon and back, but nothing much had changed in the gentle hills and glens between the rivers Bann and Callon.

  Kyle Blake could trace his roots in County Armagh back four hundred years. His ancestors had come from the Scottish Highlands during the great colonization of Ulster that began in 1609. They fought alongside Oliver Cromwell when he landed in Ulster to put down Catholic rebellions. They took part in the massacres of Catholics at Drogheda and Wexford. When Cromwell seized Catholic farmlands, Blake's ancestors planted the fields and made the land their own. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when sectarian violence raged in Armagh, members of the Blake clan joined the Peep O'Day Boys, so named because they descended on Catholic homes just before dawn. In 1795 the Blakes helped form the Orange Order.

  For nearly two centuries the Orangemen of Portadown had marched to the parish church at Drumcree on the Sunday before July 1—the anniversary of William of Orange's victory over the Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. But the previous summer—the first marching season after the peace accords—the government had acceded to the demands of the Catholics and banned the Orangemen from returning to Portadown along the largely Catholic Garvaghy Road. The standoff ignited violence across Ulster, culminating in the deaths of three young Catholic boys, when Loyalists tossed a gasoline bomb through the window of their home in Ballymoney.

  Kyle Blake was no longer an Orangeman—he had left the Order years earlier, when he first became involved with Protestant paramilitaries—but the spectacle of the British army blocking the path of Loyalist marchers was too much for him. He believed that Protestants had the right to march along the Queen's highway wherever and whenever they chose. He believed that the annual parades were a legitimate expression of Protestant heritage and culture in Northern Ireland. And he believed that any infringement on the right to march was yet another concession to the fucking Taigs.

  To Blake, the standoff at Drumcree betrayed something much more ominous about the political landscape of Northern Ireland: The Protestant ascendancy in Ulster had crumbled, and the Catholics were winning.

  For thirty years Blake had watched the British make concession after concession to the Catholics and the IRA, but the Good Friday accords were more than he could bear. Blake believed they could lead to only one thing: British withdrawal from Northern Ireland and union with the Irish Republic. Two previous attempts at peace in Ulster—the Sunningdale Agreement and the Anglo-Irish Agreement—had been torpedoed by Protestant intransigence. Kyle Blake had vowed to destroy the Good Friday accords too.

  Last night he had taken the first step. He had engineered one of the most spectacular displays of international terrorism ever imagined, simultaneously striking at Sinn Fein, the Irish government, and the British.

  The spires of St. Mark's Church appeared before him, looming over the Market High Street. Blake parked outside his printshop, even though it was several blocks from his destination. He carefully checked for signs of surveillance as he walked past the shuttered shops and storefronts.

  Ironically, Blake drew his tactical inspiration not from the Protestant paramilitaries of the past but from the men who had bombed his native Portadown time and time again, the IRA. Since the onset of the current Troubles in 1969, the IRA had engaged its enemies—the British army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary— and committed spectacular acts of terrorism as well. The IRA had murdered British soldiers, assassinated Lord Mountbatten, and even tried to blow up the entire British Cabinet, yet it had maintained the image of defenders of an oppressed people.

  Blake wanted to turn the sectarian politics of Northern Ireland upside down. He wanted to show the world that the Protestant way of life in Ulster was under siege. And he was willing to play the terror card to do it—harder and better than the IRA had ever dreamed.

  Blake entered a small side street and stepped inside McConville's pub. The room was dark, crowded, and filled with a blue pall of cigarette smoke. Against the paneled walls were booths with high doors, each large enough for a half-dozen people.

  The barman behind the brass counter looked up as Blake entered. "You hear the news, Kyle?"

  Blake shook his head. "What news?"

  "There's been a claim. It's Prods. Some group calling themselves the Ulster Freedom Brigade."

  "You don't say, Jimmie."

  The barman inclined his head toward the far corner of the room. "Gavin and Rebecca are waiting for you."

  Blake winked and sliced his way through the room. He knocked once on the door of the booth and slipped inside. Two people were seated around the small table, a large man in a black rollneck sweater and gray corduroy sport jacket and an attractive woman in a beige woolen pullover. The man was Gavin Spencer, chief of Brigade operations. The woman was Rebecca Wells, the Brigade's intelligence chief.

  Blake removed his coat and hung it on a hook on the wall. The barman appeared.

  Blake said, "Three Guinness, Jimmie."

  "If you're hungry I can run next door for some sandwiches."

  "Sandwiches would be fine."

  Blake handed the barman a ten-pound note; then he latched the door of the booth and sat down. They sat in silence for a moment, looking at each other. It was the first time they had dared to gather since the attacks. Each was ecstatic about the success of the operations, yet each was edgy. They realized there was no turning back now.

  "How are your men?" Blake asked Gavin Spencer.

  "They're ready for more," Spencer said. He had the powerful body of a dockworker and the disheveled air of a playwright. His black hair was shot with gray, and a thick forelock was forever falling across a pair of intense blue eyes. Like Blake, he had served in the British army and had been a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force. "But obviously they're a wee bit concerned about the timing mechanisms on the detonators."

  Blake lit a cigarette and rubbed his eyes. It had been his decision to sacrifice the bombers in Dublin and London by manipulating the timing mechanisms on the bombs. His reasoning was as simple as it was Machiavellian. He was nose-to-nose with the British intelligence and security establishment, one of the most ruthless and efficient in Europe. The Ulster Freedom Brigade needed to survive if it was to carry on its campaign of violence. If either bomber had fallen into the hands of the police, the Brigade would be in serious danger.

  "Blame it on the bomb makers," Blake said. "Tell them we're new at this game. The IRA has its own engineering department, dedicated to nothing except building better bombs. But even the IRA makes mistakes. When they broke the cease-fire in 'ninety-six, their first bombs malfunctioned. They were out of practice."

  "I'll tell my men," Gavin Spencer sa
id. "They'll believe us once, but if it happens again they'll be suspicious. If we're going to win this fight we need men who are willing to pull the trigger and plant the bomb."

  Blake started to speak, but there was a soft knock at the door of the cubicle, and he stopped himself as he got up to open the door. The barman entered and handed Blake a bag of sandwiches.

  "And what about Bates?" Blake asked, when the barman was gone.

  "We may have a problem," Rebecca Wells said.

  Blake and Spencer looked at the woman. She was tall and fit, and the bulky woolen sweater could not conceal her square shoulders. Black hair fell about her face and neck, framing wide cheekbones. Her eyes were oval and the color of an overcast winter sky. Like many women in Northern Ireland, she had become a widow too young. Her husband had worked in the intelligence section of the UVF until an IRA gunman assassinated him in West Belfast. Rebecca had been pregnant at the time. She miscarried that night. After her recovery she joined the UVF and picked up the threads of her husband's work. She quit the UVF when it agreed to a cease-fire, and a few months later she secretly joined forces with Kyle Blake.

  If anyone deserved credit for the assassination of Eamonn Dillon, it was Rebecca Wells. She had patiently developed a source inside Sinn Fein headquarters on the Falls Road, a rather unattractive young woman who worked on the clerical staff. Rebecca had befriended her, taken her for drinks, introduced her to men. After several months the relationship began to bear fruit. The girl inadvertently fed Rebecca a steady stream of information on Sinn Fein and its senior officers: strategies, internal disputes, personal habits, sexual tastes, movements, and security. Rebecca gave this information to Gavin Spencer, who then planned Dillon's murder.

  "The police have put together a photo-kit sketch of him," she said. "Every officer in the province is carrying one in his pocket. We can't move him again until things cool off."

  "Things are never going to cool off, Rebecca," Blake said.

  "The longer he stays in hiding, the better the chances are that he'll be found," she said. "And if he's found, we're in serious trouble."

  Blake looked at Gavin Spencer. "Where's Bates now?"

  The man in the fieldstone barn outside Hillsborough had been moved a half-dozen times since the killing of Eamonn Dillon on the Falls Road. He had been permitted no radio, for fear the British army's elite intelligence eavesdropping units might pick up the sound. He had been permitted no stove, for fear the army's infrared sensors might detect any unusual source of heat. His bed was a brick-hard folding army cot with a blanket rough as steel wool; the green oilskin jacket he had worn during the assassination served as a pillow. He survived on dry goods—biscuits, crackers, cookies, nuts—and canned meats. Cigarette smoking was permitted, though he was to be careful not to set fire to the hay. He pissed and shit in a large stockpot. The stench was unbearable at first, but gradually he grew used to it. He wanted to dump the thing, but his handlers had warned him never to set foot outside the barn, even at night.

  They had left him a strange collection of books: biographies of Wolfe Tone, Eamon De Valera, and Michael Collins and a couple of battered volumes of snarling Republican poetry. There was a handwritten note stuffed in one of them: Sun Tzu said know your enemy. Read these and learn. But most of the time the man just lay on his cot, staring into the darkness, smoking his cigarettes, reliving those few moments on the Falls Road.

  Bates heard the rattle of an engine. He rose and peered through a small window. A van clattered over the unpaved track, headlamps doused. It came to a halt in the stew of mud and gravel outside the door of the barn. Two people stepped out; the driver was large and bulky, the passenger smaller and lighter of foot. A few seconds later Bates heard a knock on the door. "Go to the cot and lie facedown," said the voice on the other side of the door.

  Bates did as he was told. He heard the sound of two people entering the barn. A moment later the same voice commanded him to sit up. The large man was seated on a stack of feed bags; the smaller figure paced behind him like a troubled conscience.

  "Sorry about the smell," Bates said uneasily. "I smoke to cover it up. Mind?"

  In the flare of a match Bates could see that both his visitors were wearing balaclavas. He touched the flame to the end of his cigarette and blew out the match, casting the barn into pitch darkness once more.

  "When do I get to leave?" he said.

  Before Dillon's execution, Bates had been told he would be sent out of Northern Ireland as soon as things cooled down. There were friends in an isolated patch of the Scottish Highlands, they had told him. Somewhere the security services would never find him.

  "It's not safe to move you yet," the large man said. "The RUC have produced a photo-kit sketch of you. We need to let things cool down a wee bit more."

  Bates stood abruptly. "Christ, I'm going mad in this hole! Can't you move me somewhere else?"

  "You're safe here for now. We can't risk moving you again."

  Bates sat down, defeated. He dropped the stub of his cigarette onto the dirt floor and ground it out with his shoe. "What about the others?" he asked. "The agents who did Dublin and London?"

  "They're in hiding as well," the man said. "That's all I can say."

  "Has there been a claim of responsibility yet?"

  "We did it tonight. It's hell out there, roadblocks and checkpoints from County Antrim to the border. Until things loosen up we can't even think about moving you."

  Bates struck another match, illuminating the scene for an instant, the two hooded visitors, one seated, one standing, like statuary in a garden. He lit another cigarette and waved out the match.

  "Is there anything we can get for you to help pass the time?"

  "A girl of loose morals would be nice."

  The remark was greeted with silence.

  "Lie on the cot," the seated man said again. "Facedown."

  Charles Bates did as he was told. He heard the rustle of the feed sacks as the large man with the tattoos on his hands rose to his feet. He heard the barn door swing open.

  Then he felt something cold and hard being pressed against the base of his skull. He heard a faint click, saw a flash of brilliant light, then only darkness.

  Rebecca Wells slipped the silenced Walther pistol into her coat pocket as she climbed into the van. Gavin Spencer started the engine, turned around, and drove along the pitted farm track until he reached the Bl 77. They waited until they were clear of the farm before removing the balaclavas. Rebecca Wells stared out the window as Spencer drove expertly along the rolling, winding roadway.

  "You didn't have to do that, Rebecca. I would have done it for you."

  "Are you saying I'm not good enough to handle my job?"

  "No, I'm just saying that it's not right."

  "What's not right?"

  "A woman killing," Spencer said. "It's not right."

  "And what about Dame?" Rebecca said, using the code name of the woman who had carried the suitcase bomb into the London Underground. "She killed many more people than I did tonight, and she gave her life as well."

  "Point well taken."

  "I'm responsible for intelligence and internal security," she said. "Kyle wanted him dead. It was my job to make him dead."

  Spencer let it drop. He switched on the radio to help pass the time. He turned onto the Al and headed toward Banbridge. A few moments later Rebecca groaned. "Pull over."

  He braked to a halt on the apron of the road. Rebecca opened the door and stumbled out into the rain. She fell to her hands and knees in the light from the headlamps and was violently sick.

  4

  WASHINGTON

  The meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President James Beckwith had been scheduled well in advance; the fact that it fell just one week after the Ulster Freedom Brigade launched its wave of terror was coincidence. In fact, both men went out of their way to portray the meeting as a routine consultation between good friends, which in most respects it was. As the prime minis
ter arrived at the White House from Blair House, the guest quarters across the street, President Beckwith assured his visitor that the mansion had been named in his honor. The prime minister flashed his famous tooth-and-gums smile and assured President Beckwith that the next time he came to London a British landmark would be named in his honor.

  For two hours the President and the prime minister met with their aides and assistants in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. The agenda included a wide range of issues: coordination of defense and foreign policy, monetary and trade policy, ethnic tension in the Balkans, the Middle East peace process, and, of course, Northern Ireland. Shortly after noon the two leaders adjourned to the Oval Office for a private lunch.

  Snow drifted over the South Lawn as the two men stood at the window behind Beckwith's desk and admired the view. A large fire burned brightly in the fireplace, and a table was set before it. The President confidently took his guest by the arm and shepherded him across the room. After a lifetime in politics, James Beckwith was comfortable with the ceremonial aspects of his job. The Washington press corps routinely said he was the best performer to occupy the Oval Office since Ronald Reagan.

  Still, he was beginning to tire of it all. He had barely won reelection, trailing his opponent, Democratic senator Andrew Sterling of Nebraska, throughout the campaign until an Arab terrorist group blew a jetliner from the sky off Long Island. Beckwith's skillful handling of the crisis—and his quick retaliatory strikes against the terrorists—had helped turn the tide.

  Now he had settled comfortably into lame-duck status. The Democratic-controlled Congress had scrapped the primary goal of his second term, the construction of a national missile defense system. His agenda, such as it was, consisted of a series of minor conservative initiatives that required no congressional backing. Two members of his cabinet were being picked apart by independent counsels for financial misconduct. Every night over dinner Beckwith and his wife, Anne, talked less about politics and more about how they would spend their retirement in California. He had even granted Anne's longtime wish to take their summer vacation in the mountains of northern Italy. In years past his strategists had warned that vacationing abroad would be politically disastrous. Beckwith simply didn't care any longer. Close friends attributed the drift to the loss of his friend and chief of staff Paul Vandenberg, who apparently had shot himself to death on Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River a year earlier.