The Marching Season Read online

  The two men sat down to lunch. Tony Blair was a notoriously fast eater—a fact included in Beckwith's briefing books—and he had devoured his grilled chicken breast and rice pilaf before Beckwith had consumed a quarter of his meal. Beckwith was famished after the morning of intense discussions, so he made the British leader sit patiently while he finished the last of his lunch.

  Their relationship had soured the previous year, when Blair publicly criticized Beckwith for launching air strikes against the Sword of Gaza, the Palestinian terrorist group blamed for the downing of a TransAtlantic Airlines jet off Long Island. Several weeks later the Sword of Gaza retaliated by attacking the TransAtlantic ticket counter at London's Heathrow Airport, killing several Americans and British travelers. Beckwith never forgot Blair's rebuke. Known to be on a first-name basis with most of the world's leaders, Beckwith pointedly referred to Blair as "Mr. Prime Minister." Blair responded in kind by always referring to Beckwith as "Mr. President."

  Beckwith slowly finished his lunch while Blair droned on about a "truly fascinating" economic textbook he had read during the flight from London to Washington. Blair was a voracious reader, and Beckwith genuinely respected his powerful intellect. Christ, he thought, I barely get through my briefing books at night without falling asleep.

  A steward cleared away the remains of lunch. Beckwith had tea, Blair coffee. A silence fell over the conversation. The fire crackled like small arms. Blair made a show of looking out the window toward the Washington Monument for a moment before speaking.

  "I want to be very blunt with you about something, Mr. President," Blair said, turning away from the window and meeting Beckwith's pale blue gaze. "I realize our relationship has not always been as good as it should be, but I want to ask a very serious favor of you."

  "Our relationship is not as good as it could be, Mr. Prime Minister, because you publicly distanced yourself from the United States when I launched air strikes against the Sword of Gaza training bases. I needed your support then, and you were not there for me."

  A steward entered the room with dessert but, sensing the conversation had turned serious, quickly withdrew again. Blair looked down, checking his emotions, and looked up again.

  "Mr. President, I said what I said because I believed it to be the case. I thought the air strikes were heavy-handed, premature, and based on suspect evidence at best. I thought they would only increase tension and do harm to the cause of peace in the Middle East. I believe I was proven correct."

  Beckwith knew Blair was referring to the Sword of Gaza attack at Heathrow Airport. "Mr. Prime Minister, if you had concerns, you should have picked up the telephone and called me instead of running to the nearest reporter. Allies stand by each other, even when their leaders come from opposite ends of the political spectrum."

  The cold look in Blair's eyes made clear that he did not appreciate Beckwith's lecture on the fundamentals of statesmanship. He sipped his coffee as Beckwith continued.

  "In fact, I suspect the Sword of Gaza chose to retaliate on British soil because your comments led them to believe they could drive a wedge between two old allies."

  Blair looked up from his coffee cup as though he had been punched. "You're not suggesting I'm to blame for the attack on Heathrow."

  "Of course not, Mr. Prime Minister. To engage in something like that would be unbecoming of good friends."

  Blair replaced the cup in his saucer and pushed it a few inches away. "Mr. President, I want to talk to you about Ambassador Hath-away's replacement."

  "Fair enough," Beckwith said.

  "If I may be blunt, Mr. President, I've seen some of the names you're considering, and, frankly, I'm not terribly impressed." Color rose in Beckwith's cheeks, but Blair plowed on. "I was hoping for someone a bit more talented."

  Beckwith remained silent while Blair made his points. The New York Times had published a piece earlier that week containing the names of a half-dozen candidates for the job. The names were accurate, because they had been leaked on Beckwith's orders. The list contained several large Republican donors, with a couple of professional Foreign Service officers thrown in for good measure. London was a political post by tradition, and Beckwith was under pressure from the Republican National Committee to use the short-term appointment to reward a generous benefactor.

  Blair said, "Mr. President, are you aware of the American term in your face?"

  Beckwith nodded, but his expression made clear he never used such crude street talk.

  "Mr. President, this group called the Ulster Freedom Brigade has launched its campaign of terror because they want to undo the steps toward peace that we've made in Northern Ireland. I want to demonstrate to these cowardly terrorists, and to the world, that they will never succeed. I want to get in their face, Mr. President, and I need your help."

  Beckwith smiled for the first time. "How can I help, Prime Minister?"

  "You can help by appointing a superstar to be your next ambassador to London. Someone all sides can respect. A name that everyone will know. I don't want someone who's going to keep the seat warm until you leave office. I want someone who can help me achieve my goal, a permanent settlement to the conflict in Northern Ireland."

  The intensity and the honesty of the younger man's arguments were impressive. But Beckwith had been in politics long enough to know that one should never give away something for nothing.

  "If I appoint a superstar to London, what do I get in return?"

  Blair smiled broadly. "You get my unequivocal support for your European trade initiative."

  "Deal," Beckwith said, after a brief show of thought.

  A steward entered the room.

  Beckwith said, "Two glasses of brandy, please." The drinks appeared a moment later. Beckwith raised his glass. "To good friends."

  "To good friends."

  Blair sipped the brandy with the caution of one who rarely drinks. He replaced the snifter carefully and said, "Do you have any candidates in mind, Mr. President?"

  "Actually, Tony, I think I've got just the man for the job."

  5

  SHELTER ISLAND, NEW YORK

  For many years, little about the grand white clapboard house overlooking Dering Harbor and Shelter Island Sound had suggested that Senator Douglas Cannon owned the property. There were occasional guests requiring Secret Service protection, and sometimes there were large parties when Douglas was running for reelection and needed money. Usually, though, the house seemed like all the others along Shore Road, just a little larger and a little better cared for. After his retirement, and the death of his wife, the senator had spent more time at Cannon Point than in his sprawling Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan. He insisted the neighbors call him Douglas and, rather awkwardly, they complied. Cannon Point became more accessible than ever before. Sometimes, when tourists stopped to stare or take a photograph of the estate, the senator would appear on the manicured lawn, retrievers scampering at his heels, and stop to chat. The intruders had changed all that.

  Two weeks after the incident the police had allowed the senator to repair all visible reminders of the episode, thus wiping out the last of the physical evidence. An off-island contractor that no one had ever heard of—and no telephone directory seemed to list— handled the work.

  Rumors about the extensive damage swept over the island. Harry Carp, the crimson-faced owner of the hardware store in the Heights, had heard there were a dozen bullet holes in the walls of the sitting room and the kitchen. Patty McLean, the checkout girl at the Mid-Island Market, heard the bloodstains in the guest cottage were so extensive the entire floor had to be replaced and the walls repainted. Martha Creighton, the island's most prominent real estate broker, quietly predicted Cannon Point would be on the market within six months. Clearly, Martha murmured over her cappuccino at the village coffeehouse, the senator and his family would want to make a fresh start somewhere else.

  But the senator and his daughter, Elizabeth, and his son-in-law, Michael, decided to stay on. Cann
on Point, once open and accessible, assumed the air of a settlement in occupied territory. Another obscure contractor descended on the property, this time to erect a ten-foot brick and iron fence and a small clapboard gingerbread hut at the entrance for a permanent security guard. When the work was complete, a second team arrived to litter the property with cameras and motion detectors. The neighbors complained that the senator's new security measures disrupted views of Dering Harbor and the Sound. There was talk of a petition, some grumbling at a village council meeting, even a nasty letter or two in the Shelter Island Reporter. But by summer everyone had become used to the new fence, and no one could remember why anyone was upset about it in the first place.

  "You can hardly blame them," Martha Creighton said. "If he wants a fucking fence, let him have a fucking fence. Hell, I'd let him build a moat if he wanted one."

  Of Michael Osbourne, little was known on the island. He was thought to be involved in business of some sort, international sales or the murky world of consulting. He usually kept to himself when he and his wife, Elizabeth, came out to the island for the weekend. When he ate breakfast at the Heights pharmacy, or stopped at the Dory for a beer, he always brought a few newspapers for protection. Attempts at polite conversation were gently rebuffed; something of grave importance always seemed to be pulling his gaze back to his newspapers. The island's female population found him attractive and forgave his coolness as a manifestation of some inner shyness. Harry Carp, known for his plain speaking, routinely referred to Michael as "that rude sonof-abitch from the city."

  The shooting had softened opinions of Michael Osbourne, even Harry Carp's. According to the rumors, he had nearly died from a gunshot wound several times that night—once on the dock at Cannon Point, once in the helicopter, once on the operating table at Stony Brook hospital. After his release he remained inside the house for a time, but soon he could be spotted gingerly walking the grounds, his right arm in a sling beneath a battered leather bomber jacket. Sometimes he could be seen standing at the end of the dock, gazing into the Sound. Sometimes, usually in the evening, he would seem to lose himself and stay there— like Gatsby, Martha Creighton would say—until the last light was gone.

  "I don't understand why the traffic is so heavy in the middle of January," Elizabeth Osbourne said, drumming the nail of her forefinger on the leather center armrest. They were crawling east on the Long Island Expressway, through the town of Islip, at thirty miles per hour.

  Michael had been retired from the Central Intelligence Agency for a year, and time meant little to him—even time wasted in traffic. "It's Friday night," he said. "It's always bad on Friday night."

  The traffic thinned as they drove east from the mid-island suburbs. The night was clear and bitterly cold; a bone-white three-quarter moon hovered just above the northern horizon. The road opened before him, and Michael pressed the accelerator. The engine roared, and after a few seconds the speedometer reluctantly rose to seventy. The exigencies of fatherhood had compelled him to trade his sleek silver Jaguar for a behemoth sport utility vehicle.

  The twins, swaddled in pink and blue blankets, dozed in their car seats. Maggie, the English nanny, lay sprawled on the third seat, sleeping soundly. Elizabeth reached out in the darkness and took Michael's hand. She had returned to work that week after three months of maternity leave. While she had been away from work she had dressed in nothing but flannel shirts, baggy sweat pants, and loose-fitting khaki trousers. Now she wore the uniform of a high-priced New York lawyer: a charcoal-gray suit, a tasteful gold watch, pearl earrings. She had shed the extra weight of pregnancy by taking hour-long marches on the treadmill in the bedroom of their Fifth Avenue apartment. Beneath the crisp lines of her Calvin Klein suit, Elizabeth was slender as a fashion model. Still, the strain and fatigue of suddenly being a working mother showed. Her short ash-blond hair was in mild disarray; her eyes were so red she had forsaken her contact lenses for tortoiseshell spectacles. Michael thought she looked like a law student cramming for exams.

  "How does it feel to be back?" Michael asked.

  "Like I never left. Pull over so I can have a cigarette. I can't smoke in the car with the children."

  "I don't want to make an unnecessary stop."

  "Come on, Michael!"

  "I have to stop in Riverhead for gas. You can have a cigarette then. This thing gets about five miles a gallon. I'll probably have to fill up a couple of times between here and the island."

  "Oh, God, you're not going to start bitching about the Jaguar again?"

  "I just don't understand why you got to keep your Mercedes and I'm stuck driving this beast. I feel like a soccer mom."

  "We needed a bigger car, and your mechanic got to spend more time with your Jaguar than you did."

  "I'm still not happy about it."

  "Get over it, darling."

  "If you keep talking like that, you're not going to get me in the sack tonight."

  "Don't make idle threats, Michael."

  The expressway ended at the town of Riverhead. Michael stopped at an all-night market and gas station and filled the tank. Elizabeth walked a few steps away from the pumps and smoked, stamping her feet against the concrete for warmth. She had sworn off cigarettes with the pregnancy, but two weeks after the children were born the nightmares returned, and she started smoking again to ease her nerves.

  Michael raced eastward along the North Fork of Long Island, past endless fields of sod and dormant vineyards. Now and again the waters of Long Island Sound appeared on his left—black, shimmering with moonlight. He entered the village of Greenport and drove through quiet streets until he reached the landing for the North Ferry.

  Elizabeth was sleeping. Michael pulled on a leather jacket and climbed out onto the deck. Whitecaps beat against the prow of the ferry, sending sea spray over the gunwales. It was bitterly cold, but the hood of the car was warm with engine heat. Michael climbed up and sat down, hands shoved into his coat pockets. Shelter Island lay before him across the Sound, blacked out except for a large summerhouse at the mouth of Dering Harbor, which burned with clean white light. Cannon Point.

  When the ferry docked, Michael climbed back inside and started the engine. "I was watching you, Michael," Elizabeth said, without opening her eyes. "You were thinking about it, weren't you?"

  There was no point lying to her. He was thinking about it— the night a year earlier when a former KGB assassin, code-named October, had tried to kill them both at Cannon Point.

  "Do you do it often?" she said, interpreting his silence as confirmation.

  "When I'm on the ferry, looking at your father's house, I can't help it."

  "I think about it all the time," she said distantly. "Every morning I wake up, and I wonder if this will be the day: the day it all goes away. But it never does."

  "It takes time," Michael said, then added, "a lot of time."

  "Do you think he's really dead?"

  "October?"

  "Yes."

  "The Agency thinks so."

  "What about you?"

  "I'd sleep better if a body turned up somewhere, but it won't."

  They passed through the Victorian cottages and clapboard shops of Shelter Island Heights and raced along Winthrop Road. Dering Harbor shone in the moonlight, empty except for Douglas Cannon's sloop, Athena, clinging to her mooring, prow turned to the wind. Michael followed Shore Road into Dering Harbor village and a moment later drew to a halt at the gate of Cannon Point.

  The night security guard stepped out of the hut and shone a light over the car. Douglas was spending several thousand dollars a month on security since the assassination attempt. The Agency had offered to pay a portion of the expense, but Douglas, forever leery of the intelligence community, bore all the cost himself. Michael followed the gravel drive through the property and stopped outside the front door of the main house. The senator was waiting for them on the steps, wearing an ancient yellow sailing coat, his retrievers frolicking at his feet.

  It was T
he New Yorker that first likened Douglas Cannon to Pericles; while he usually professed some mild embarrassment at the comparison, he did nothing to dispel it. He had inherited enormous wealth and decided quite early in life that the prospect of merely adding to his fortune depressed him greatly. Instead, he devoted himself to his first love, which was history. He taught at Columbia and wrote books. His vast apartment on Fifth Avenue was a gathering place for writers, artists, poets, and musicians. Elizabeth, when she was a little girl, met Jack Kerouac, Huey Newton, and a strange little man with blond hair and sunglasses named Andy. Only years later did she realize the man had been Andy Warhol.

  During Watergate, Douglas realized he could no longer remain confined to the bleachers, the eternal spectator. He ran for Congress in an overwhelmingly liberal Democratic district in midtown Manhattan and entered the House as a reformer in the class of '74. Two years later he was elected to the Senate. During his four terms there he served as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, and the Select Committee on Intelligence.

  Douglas was always something of an iconoclast, but since his retirement from the Senate, his dress and mannerisms had become more peculiar than ever. He wore nothing but tattered corduroy trousers, aged boating shoes, and sweaters that, like the man himself, were beginning to show their age. He believed that cold sea air was the secret to longevity, and he was constantly giving himself bronchial infections by sailing throughout the winter and taking himself on endless treks along the frozen footpaths of the Mashomack Preserve.

  Elizabeth stepped out of the car, forefinger pressed to her lips, and kissed his cheek. "Be quiet, Daddy," she whispered. "The children are fast asleep."