The Marching Season

by Daniel Silva

  Michael looked at Delaroche, who was shaking his head.

  "She's lying," he said. "The Director arranged everything for me here—transportation, weapons, everything. He specifically decided to carry out the assassination in Washington because he knew the ambassador would be more vulnerable here than in London. It was timed to coincide with the Northern Ireland conference to increase the impact on the peace process." He paused a moment, eyes moving from Michael to Monica and back again. "She's very good, but she's lying."

  Monica ignored him, looking at Michael.

  "This is why we didn't want Delaroche to be taken into custody, Michael. Because he would lie. Because he would fabricate. He would say anything to save his own skin." Her gaze moved from Delaroche to Michael. "And the problem is, you believe him. We wanted him eliminated, because if he was arrested, we suspected he might pull a stunt like this."

  "It's not a stunt," Delaroche said. "It's the truth."

  "You should have played your part better, Michael. You should have just taken your revenge for Sarah Randolph and killed him. But now you've created quite a mess—for the Agency and for yourself."

  Monica stood up, signaling that the meeting had come to an end.

  Michael said, "If you insist on playing it this way, you leave me no other choice but to go to Counterintelligence and the Bureau with my suspicions about you. You'll spend the next two years going through the Agency equivalent of Chinese water torture. Then the Senate will want a piece of you. Your legal bills alone will bankrupt you. You'll never work in government again, and no one on Wall Street will touch you with a barge pole. You'll be destroyed, Monica."

  "You don't have enough proof, and no one will believe you."

  "The son-in-law of Ambassador Douglas Cannon alleges that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in the attempt to assassinate him. That's a helluva story. There's not a reporter in Washington who wouldn't jump all over it."

  "And you'll be prosecuted for leaking Agency secrets."

  "I'll take my chances."

  Adrian Carter stepped into the room. Monica looked at him; then her eyes settled back on Michael.

  "A witch hunt will destroy the Agency, Michael. You should know that. Your father was caught up in the Angleton mole hunt, wasn't he? It almost ruined his career. Is this your way of taking revenge on the Agency for your father? Or are you still resentful of me because I had the gall to suspend you once?"

  "You're not in any position to piss me off right now, Monica."

  "So what do I have to do to prevent you from making this reckless allegation against me?"

  "You're going to resign at the appropriate time. And until then, you're going to do exactly as Adrian and I say. And you're going to help me put the Society out of business."

  "God, but you're a naive fool. Putting the Society out of business is impossible. The only way to control them is to be part of them." She looked at Delaroche. "What do you plan to do with him?"

  Michael said, "I'll handle Delaroche."

  He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a cassette tape.

  "I made this today, along with a few duplicates," he said. "It contains a full accounting of your role in the Society, the Trans-Atlantic affair, and the attempt to kill my father-in-law. I'm going to set up a trip wire. If any harm comes to Adrian, Delaroche, or me, copies of this tape will be sent to The New York Times and the FBI."

  Michael placed the tape back in his pocket.

  "It's your move, Monica."

  "I've given six years of my life to the Agency," she said. "I've done everything in my power to ensure its survival and to protect it from men like you—dinosaurs who lack the vision to see that the Agency has a role in this new world of ours. The game has passed you by, Michael, and you're too stupid to even notice."

  "You've used the Agency as a personal plaything to advance your own interests, and now I'm taking it back."

  She pulled her bag over her shoulder, turned, and walked out.

  "It's your move, Monica," Michael repeated, but she simply kept walking. A moment later they heard the whine of the helicopter engine coming to life again. Michael stepped onto the veranda in time to see Monica's chopper lift from the lawn and disappear over the waters of the Sound.

  They spent the next day waiting. Carter stood on the veranda, field glasses around his neck, staring toward the Sound like a border guard on the Berlin Wall. Michael circled the house, marching along stony beaches and through the woods, searching for signs of an enemy buildup. All the while Delaroche just watched them, a slightly bemused bystander to the wreck he had caused.

  Carter stayed in touch with Headquarters. Has anyone heard from Monica? he would ask innocently at the conclusion of each conversation. The answers grew more intriguing as the day progressed. Monica's canceled all meetings. Monica's holed up in her office. Monica's not taking calls. Monica's gone underground. Monica's refusing food and drink. Michael and Carter debated the significance of the reports, as spies are prone to do. Was she drawing up the terms of surrender or preparing a counterattack?

  In the afternoon Carter went into the village for food. Delaroche cooked omelettes for them, propped on a stool because he couldn't stand long on his swollen ankle. They drank one bottle of wine, then another. Delaroche provided the entertainment. For two hours he lectured: training, tradecraft, assignments, cover identities, weaponry, and tactics. He told them nothing they could ever use against him, but he seemed to take pleasure from even the slightest unburdening of secrets. He said nothing of Sarah Randolph or Astrid Vogel or the night a year earlier at Cannon Point, when he and Michael had shot each other. He remained very still as he spoke, hands folded on the table, left hand covering the right in order to hide the puckered scar that had led Michael to him.

  Carter asked the questions, because Michael was already somewhere else. Oh, he was listening, Carter thought—Michael, the human Dictaphone, capable of monitoring three conversations and reciting each of them back to you a week later—but a corner of his mind was turning over another problem. Finally, Carter switched to Russian, a language Michael did not speak well, and the two men finished their conversation in private.

  At dusk, Michael and Delaroche walked. Michael the former track star had wrapped Delaroche's ankle in heavy white tape. Carter remained behind in the house; it would be like eavesdropping on quarreling lovers, and he wanted no part of it. Still, he could not resist the urge to step onto the veranda and watch them. He was not a voyeur, just a control officer, looking out for his agent and old friend.

  They walked along the bulkhead toward the dock, Delaroche limping slightly. As the light grew weaker, Carter could not tell one from the other, so similar were the two men in height and build. He realized then that in many ways they were two halves of the same man. Each possessed traits present, but successfully repressed, in the other. If not for birthright, the haphazard roulette wheel of time and place, each might very well have walked the opposite path: Jean-Paul Delaroche, virtuous intelligence officer; Michael Osbourne, assassin.

  After a long time—an hour, Carter guessed, because uncharacteristically he had neglected to record the time the conversation began—Michael and Delaroche started back toward the house.

  They paused at Michael's rental car and faced each other over the hood. Carter still could not tell which was which. One seemed to be speaking with intensity, the other lazily kicking at the ground with the toe of his shoe. When the conversation ended, the one who had been kicking the ground held out his hand over the hood of the car, but the other refused to take it.

  Delaroche withdrew his hand and climbed into the car. He drove through the security gate and sped into the darkness along Shore Road. Michael Osbourne walked slowly up to the house.

  APRIL

  44

  WASHINGTON VIENNA

  SOUTH ISLAND, NEW ZEALAND

  Ambassador Douglas Cannon was released from George Washington University Hospital on an unusually hot
morning in the second week of April. Overnight it had rained, but by mid-morning the puddles were blazing beneath a fierce sunlight. Only a small company of reporters and cameramen waited outside in the drive, for Washington's media suffer from a sort of collective attention deficit syndrome, and no one was really interested in watching an old man leaving the hospital. Still, Douglas managed to "make news," as they say in the trade, when he loudly demanded to walk rather than ride out in the obligatory wheelchair—so loudly, in fact, that he could be heard by the reporters outside. "I was shot in the back, goddammit, not the legs," Cannon rumbled. His remarks were reported that night on the evening news, much to the ambassador's delight.

  He stayed at the house on N Street in Georgetown for the first two weeks of his recovery, then went home to his beloved Cannon Point. A small crowd of well-wishers waved and shouted as Douglas's car passed through Shelter Island Heights. He remained at Cannon Point for the rest of the spring. The security guards accompanied him as he walked the stony tide line of Upper Beach and the footpaths of Mashomack Preserve. By June he felt strong enough to go for a sail aboard Athena. Uncharacteristically, he surrendered the helm to Michael, but he barked orders and criticized his son-in-law's seamanship so forcefully that Michael threatened to throw him overboard off Plum Island.

  Old friends urged Douglas to resign his post in London; even President Beckwith thought it would be best. But at the end of June, he returned to London and settled into his office at Grosvenor Square. On July 4, Independence Day, he made a special appearance before Parliament, then traveled to Belfast, where he received a hero's welcome.

  To coincide with his visit, the British and American intelligence and security services released the findings of their joint investigation into the Ulster Freedom Brigade's attempt to kill Cannon in Washington. The report concluded that there were two terrorists involved, a woman named Rebecca Wells, who was also involved in the Hartley Hall affair, and an unidentified man who apparently was a professional assassin hired by the group.

  Despite a worldwide search, both terrorists remained at large.

  Within hours of Cannon's visit to Northern Ireland, a large car bomb exploded outside a market near the corner of the White-rock Road and the Falls Road. Five people died and another sixteen were injured. The Ulster Freedom Brigade claimed responsibility That night a fringe Republican group calling itself the Irish Liberation Cell avenged the attack by setting off a massive truck bomb that flattened much of central Portadown. The group promised to continue its attacks until the Good Friday peace accords were dead.

  For many weeks the endless corridors at Langley crackled with rumors of a shake-up on the Seventh Floor. Monica was leaving, according to one rumor. She was staying forever, according to another. Monica had fallen out of favor with the president. Monica was about to become secretary of state. The most popular rumor among her detractors was the story that she had suffered a nervous breakdown. That she had become delusional. That in a fit of psychotic rage she had tried to smash her precious mahogany office furniture to splinters.

  Inevitably, the pervasive rumors about Monica reached the ears of The Washington Post. The newspaper's intelligence correspondent chose to discard the more salacious things he had heard, but in a lengthy front-page piece he did report that Monica had lost the confidence of the Agency's rank and file, the barons of the intelligence community, and even the President himself. That afternoon, during a photo opportunity with schoolchildren in the Rose Garden, President Beckwith said that Monica Tyler retained his "full and complete confidence." Translated from Washington-speak into plain English, the remark meant that Monica Tyler was being measured for the drop.

  She was besieged with interview requests. Meet the Press wanted her. Ted Koppel telephoned personally to invite her on Nightline. A booker from the staff of Larry King Live actually tried to talk her way past the guards at the front gate. Monica turned them all away. Instead, she released a written statement saying that she served at the pleasure of the President, and if the President wanted her to remain she would.

  But the damage was already done. Winter descended on the Seventh Floor. Doors remained tightly closed. Paper stopped flowing. Paralysis was setting in. Monica was cut off, said the rumor mill. Monica was less accessible than ever. Monica was finished. Twee-dledee and Tweedledum were rarely seen; when they did appear, they moved about the halls like skittish gray wolves. Something had to be done, said the rumors. Things couldn't go on this way.

  Finally, in July, Monica summoned the staff to the auditorium and announced that she was resigning, effective September 1. She was making the announcement early so that President Beck-with—whom she admired deeply and had been honored to serve—would have ample time to choose a suitable successor. In the meantime there would be changes in the senior staff. Adrian Carter would be the new executive director. Cynthia Martin would take Carter's place as chief of the Counter-terrorism Center. And Michael Osbourne would be the new deputy director for operations.

  In the autumn, Monica dropped from sight. Her old firm wanted her back, but Monica said she needed some time to herself before returning to the grind of Wall Street. She began to travel; reports of her whereabouts regularly reached Carter and Michael on the Seventh Floor at Langley. Monica was always alone, according to watch reports. No friends, no family, no lovers, no dogs—no suspicious contacts of any kind. She had been seen in Buenos Aires. She had been spotted in Paris. She had gone on safari in South Africa. She went scuba diving in the Red Sea, much to the surprise of everyone at Headquarters, since no one there had ever unearthed the fact that she was an expert diver. In late November a surveillance artist from the CIA's Vienna Station photographed Monica seated alone in a chilly cafe in Stephansplatz.

  That same night Monica Tyler was walking back to her hotel after dinner, through a narrow pedestrian passageway in the shadow of Saint Stephan's Cathedral, when a man appeared before her. He was average in height, compact in build, and light on his feet. Something about the way he moved, the determined rhythm of his gait, set off alarm bells in her head.

  Monica glanced over her shoulder and realized she was alone. She stopped walking, turned around, and started back toward the square. The man, now behind her, only quickened his pace. Monica did not run—she realized it would be pointless—she just closed her eyes and kept walking.

  The man drew closer, but nothing happened. She stopped and spun around to challenge him. As she turned the man removed a gun from the inside of his jacket. A long, slender silencer was fitted into the end of the barrel.

  "Dear God, no," she said, but the man's arm swung up and he fired rapidly three times.

  Monica Tyler fell backward, staring up at the spires of the cathedral. She listened to the sound of her killer walking away, felt her own blood leaking from her body onto the cold cobblestones.

  Then the spires of Saint Stephan's turned to water and she died.

  In Georgetown, Elizabeth Osbourne heard the telephone ringing. Now that Michael was the deputy director, phone calls at four in the morning were not uncommon. She had an important meeting with a client in the morning—she had transferred to the firm's Washington office when Michael was promoted—and she needed to sleep. She closed her eyes and tried not to listen to Michael murmuring in the dark.

  "Anything important?" she asked, when she heard him replace the receiver.

  "Monica Tyler was murdered tonight in Vienna."

  "Murdered? What happened?"

  "She was shot to death."

  "Who would want to kill Monica Tyler?"

  "Monica had a lot of enemies."

  "Are you going in?"

  "No," he said. "I'll deal with it in the morning."

  She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but it was no good. There was something in Michael's voice that disturbed her. Monica had a lot of enemies. Including you, Michael, she thought.

  Sometime before dawn he left their bed. Elizabeth got up and went downstairs. She found him in the living ro
om, standing before the French doors, staring into the half-lit garden.

  "Michael," she said softly, "are you all right?"

  "I'm fine," he said, without turning around.

  "Is there something you want to talk about?"

  "No, Elizabeth," he said. "I just needed to think."

  "Michael, if there's—"

  "I said I can't talk about it, Elizabeth. So please drop it."

  He turned away from the French doors and walked past her without speaking.

  Elizabeth saw that his face was the color of ash.

  The Society for International Development and Cooperation convened its annual summer conference in a lakeside chateau, high in the mountains of New Zealand's South Island. The site had been chosen long in advance, and the frozen lake and dense fogs of the New Zealand winter proved a befitting allegory for the Society's dreadful state following Picasso's demise. The Director's background at MI6 had prepared him for the occasional blown operation, but nothing at the Intelligence Service could compare with the global folding of the tents that occurred in the hours after Picasso's unveiling. Overnight, all operations ceased. Plans for new undertakings were quietly scrapped. Communication fell silent. Money stopped flowing. The Director sealed himself in his mansion in St. John's Wood with only Daphne for company and did what any good operations man does after a right royal cock-up—he assessed the damage. And when he felt the time was right, he quietly set about stitching together the scattered remnants of his secret order.

  The conference on South Island was supposed to be a sort of coming-out party. But the Society's rehabilitation was halting at best. Two members of the executive committee did not even bother to attend. One tried to send a proxy, a suggestion the Director found laughable. Shortly after convening the meeting, the Director, in a rare fit of pique, moved to expel them both. The motion passed on a voice vote, which Daphne dutifully recorded on her steno pad.