The Marching Season (23 page)

“He’s called the Director.”

“The director of what?”

“The director of the organization that is helping you kill the ambassador.”

“What’s it called?”

Delaroche remained silent.

“You don’t know what it’s called?”

“I know,” he said.

“Do you know who belongs to it?”

“I’ve made it my business to find out.”

She walked through the salon and sat down on the edge of Astrid’s bed. Delaroche switched on the small heater.

“Do you have a name?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” he said.

“What should I call you?”

“You can stay here until we leave for America,” Delaroche said, ignoring her question. “You’ll need clean clothes and food. I’ll bring some things for you later this afternoon. Do you smoke?”

She nodded.

Delaroche tossed her a packet of cigarettes. “I’ll bring you more.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you have any other languages?”

“No,” she said.

Delaroche exhaled sharply and shook his head.

“I didn’t need other languages to operate in Northern Ireland.”

“This isn’t Northern Ireland,” he said. “Can you do anything about that accent?”

“What’s wrong with my accent?”

“You might as well hang an Orange sash across your chest.”

“I can speak like an Englishwoman.”

“Please do,” he said, and with that he pounded up the companionway and closed the hatch behind him.

CHAPTER 34

CIA HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON

One week after the Director’s meeting with Delaroche in Amsterdam, Michael Osbourne returned to the Counterterrorism Center for the first time since leaving London. He punched in his code at the secure door and stepped inside. Carter was sitting at his desk, hunched over a stack of memos, clearly irritated. He looked up at Michael and frowned. “Well, well, Sir Michael has decided to grace us with his presence,” Carter said.

“It’s an honorary knighthood. ‘Your Majesty’ will do just fine.”

Carter smiled. “Welcome home. We missed you. Everything all right?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“You have ten minutes to get read in. Then I need to see you and Cynthia in my office.”

“Fine. I’ll see you in half an hour.”

Michael walked down Abu Nidal Boulevard to his cubicle. One of the Center’s wits had hung a large Union Jack over the cubicle wall, and “God Save the Queen” issued softly from a small tape player.

“Very funny,” Michael called out, to no one in particular.

Blaze and Eurotrash appeared, followed by Cynthia Martin and Gigabyte. “We just wanted to dress the place up a little bit for you, Sir Michael,” Blaze said. “You know, make it feel a little less like Langley and a little more like home.”

“That was very thoughtful of you.”

Blaze, Eurotrash, and Gigabyte drifted away, singing a throaty rendition of “He Is an Englishman.” Cynthia remained behind and sat down in the chair facing Michael’s desk. “Congratulations, Michael. You pulled off quite a coup.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that.”

“Secretly, I think I was hoping you’d fall flat on your face. Nothing personal, you understand.”

“At least that’s honest.”

“Honesty has always been something of an affliction with me.

Michael smiled. “My father-in-law’s coming to Washington a couple of days before the White House conference on Northern Ireland starts. He wants to spend some time with his grandchildren and see some old friends on the Hill. We’re having a small dinner party the night before the conference. Why don’t you join us? I know Douglas would value your opinion.”

“I’d love to.”

Michael scribbled his address on a slip of paper and handed it to her.

“Seven o’clock,” he said.

“I’ll be there,” Cynthia said, folding the paper. “See you in Carter’s office.”

Michael sat down, switched on his computer, and read the overnight cables. An RUC patrol had discovered a car filled with two hundred pounds of Semtex in County Antrim outside Belfast. A Republican splinter group called the Real IRA was thought to be responsible. Michael closed the cable and opened another. A Catholic man had been shot to death near Banbridge in County Down. The RUC suspected that the Loyalist Volunteer Force, an ultraviolent Protestant extremist group, was responsible. Michael opened the next cable. The Portadown lodge of the Orange Order had filed the proposed route for its annual parade. Once again it was demanding the right to march along the Garvaghy Road. This summer’s marching season promised to be as confrontational as the last.

He logged off the computer and walked into Carter’s office. Cynthia was already there.

“I hope you two don’t plan on having a life for the next forty-eight hours,” Carter said.

“Our life is the Agency, Adrian,” Michael said.

“I just got off the phone with Bill Bristol.”

“Are we supposed to be impressed because you spoke with the president’s national security adviser?”

“Would you shut the fuck up for one minute and let me finish?”

Cynthia Martin smiled and looked down at her notebook.

Carter said, “Beckwith has a bug up his ass about the Northern Ireland conference. It seems his poll numbers are down, and he wants to use the peace process to shore up his approval rating.”

“Isn’t that nice,” Michael said. “How can we be of service?”

“By making sure he’s fully prepared for the conference. He needs a complete picture of the situation on the ground in Ulster. He needs background and intelligence to know how far he can push the Loyalists and the Nationalists to move things along. He needs to know whether we think a presidential trip to Northern Ireland is a good idea, given the climate.”

“When?” Michael asked.

“You and Cynthia are briefing Bristol at the White House the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh, good, I thought it was going to be something unreasonable.”

“If you two don’t think you can handle it—”

“We can handle it.”

“I thought so.”

Michael and Cynthia stood up. Carter said, “Hold on a minute, Michael.”

“You guys want to talk about me behind my back?” Cynthia asked.

“How’d you guess?” Adrian said.

Cynthia scowled at Carter and went out.

Carter said, “Don’t make any plans for lunch.”

The CIA dining room is on the seventh floor, behind a heavy metal door that looks as though it might lead to the boiler room. It used to be called the executive dining room until Personnel discovered that the junior staff found the name offensive. The Agency got rid of the word “executive” and opened the restaurant to all employees. Technically, workers from the loading dock could come to the seventh floor and eat lunch with deputy directors and division chiefs. Still, most staff preferred the massive basement cafeteria, affectionately known as “the swill pit,” where they could gossip without fear of being overheard by superiors. Monica Tyler sat at a table next to the window overlooking the thick trees along the Potomac. Her two ever-present factotums, known derisively as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, sat next to her, each clutching a leather folder as though they contained lost secrets of the ancient world. The tables around them were empty; Monica Tyler had a way of creating vacant space around herself, rather like a psychopath with a fistful of dynamite.

Monica remained seated as Michael and Carter entered the room and sat down. A waitress brought menus and order cards. Guests in the dining room did not give their orders verbally; instead, they had to meticulously fill out a small form and total their own bill. The Agency wits joked that the forms were collected at the end of each day and sent to Personnel for psychological evaluation. Carter sought vainly to engage Monica in small talk while he struggled with the complex order form. Michael knew the meal would be billed to the director’s office, so he selected the most expensive items on the menu: shrimp cocktail, broiled crab cakes, and creme brulee for dessert. Tweedledee filled out Monica’s form for her.

“Now that you’ve managed to neutralize the Ulster Freedom Brigade,” Monica began suddenly, “we think it’s time that you leave the Northern Ireland task force and move on to something more productive.”

Michael looked at Carter, who shrugged. “Who’s we?” Michael asked.

Monica looked up from her salad as though she found the question impertinent. “The Seventh Floor, of course.”

“Actually, I was hoping I could spend more time working on the October case,” Michael said.

“Actually, I intend to remove you from the October case altogether.”

Michael pushed away his plate of half-eaten shrimp and laid his napkin on the table. “Part of our agreement about my return to the Agency was that I would be allowed to spend part of my time searching for him. Why are you trying to back out of our agreement?”

“To be honest with you, Michael, Adrian thought that allowing you to pursue October might be enough to entice you back to the Center. But I never thought much of the idea, and I still don’t. Once again, you’ve proven yourself to be an effective officer, and I would be derelict if I permitted you to continue to work on a case that is unlikely to bear fruit.”

“But it
has
borne fruit, Monica. I’ve proven October is still alive and still working as an assassin and terrorist.”

“No, Michael, you didn’t prove he’s alive. You
theorize
that he is still alive, based on an enhancement of a photograph of a hand. That is quite a long way from ironclad proof.”

“We rarely deal with ironclad proof in this business, Monica.”

“Don’t lecture me, Michael.”

They fell silent as the waitress appeared and cleared away the first course.

“We’ve sent an alert to Interpol,” Monica resumed. “We’ve given warnings to our allies. There is little else that can be done. At this point, it is a law enforcement matter, and this is not a law enforcement agency.”

“I disagree,” Michael said.

“On which point?”

“You know which point.”

Monica’s acolytes stirred in their seats restlessly. Carter picked at a loose thread in the tablecloth. Nothing infuriated Monica Tyler more than being challenged by someone below her on the Agency food chain.

“Someone hired October to assassinate Ahmed Hussein,”

Michael said. “Someone is providing him with protection, travel documents, money. We need to find out who’s sponsoring him. That’s intelligence work, Monica, not law enforcement.”

“Once again, Michael, you’re assuming October was the man in Cairo. It could have been an Israeli intelligence officer. It could have been a rival member of Hamas. It could have been a PLO assassin.”

“It could have been a Pekin duck, but it wasn’t. It was October.”

“I disagree.” She smiled to demonstrate that she had borrowed Michael’s words intentionally. Her eyes flickered about him, as if searching for the best place to insert her dagger.

Michael yielded. “What do you have in mind for me?”

“The Middle East peace process is on life support,” she said. “Hamas is planting bombs in Jerusalem, and we’ve received indications the Sword of Gaza is about to go operational in Europe. In all likelihood, that means they will target Americans. I want you to finish the preparations for the White House conference on Northern Ireland, and then I want you back on the Sword of Gaza.”

“What if I’m not interested?”

“Then I’m afraid your return to the Central Intelligence Agency, though highly successful, will be rather brief.”

Morton Dunne was to the Agency as “Q” was to Bond’s Secret Service. The deputy chief of the Office of Technical Services, Dunne was the maker of exploding pens and high-frequency microphone transmitters that could be hidden in a belt buckle. He was an MIT-trained electrical engineer who could have earned five times his government salary in the private sector. He chose the Agency because the paraphernalia of espionage had always intrigued him. In his spare time he maintained the antique spy cameras and weapons housed in the Agency’s makeshift museum. He was also one of the world’s top designers of experimental kites. On weekends he could be found on the Ellipse, flying his creations around the Washington Monument. Once he placed a high-resolution miniature camera aboard a kite and photographed every square inch of the White House South Lawn.

“You have authorization for this, I assume,” Dunne said, seated in front of a large computer monitor. He was prototypical MIT—thin, pale as a cave dweller, with wire-rimmed glasses that were forever slipping down the bridge of his narrow nose. “I can’t do this without authorization from your chief.”

“I’ll bring you the chit later this afternoon, but I need the photos now.”

Dunne laid his hands on the keyboard. “What was his name?”

“October. The one we did last month for the Interpol alert.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember,” Dunne said, his fingers rattling over the keyboard. A moment later the face of October appeared on the screen. “What do you want me to do?”

“I think he may have undergone plastic surgery to change his face,” Michael said. “I’m almost certain the work was done by a Frenchman named Maurice Leroux.”

“Dr. Leroux could have done any number of things to alter his appearance.”

“Can you show me a few?” Michael asked. “Can you give me a complete series? Change the hair, give him a beard, the works.”

“It’s going to take a while.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Sit over there,” Dunne said. “And for God’s sake, Osbourne, don’t touch anything.”

It was just after midnight when Monica Tyler’s chauffeured Town Car arrived at the Harbor Place complex on the waterfront in Georgetown. Her bodyguard opened the door and shadowed her through the lobby into the elevator. He walked her to the door of her apartment and remained there as she went inside.

She ran water in her oversize bath and undressed. It was nearly morning in London. The Director was a notorious early riser; she knew he would be at his desk in a few minutes. She slipped into the bath and relaxed in the warm water. When she was finished, she wrapped herself in a thick white robe.

She went into the living room and sat down behind the mahogany desk. There were three telephones: an eight-line standard phone, an internal phone for Langley, and a special secure phone that permitted her to conduct conversations without fear of eavesdroppers. She looked at the antique gold desk clock, a gift from her old firm on Wall Street: 12:45 A.M.

Monica thought of the circumstances—the coincidences, political alliances, and serendipity—that had brought her to the top of the Central Intelligence Agency. She had graduated second in her class at Yale Law, but instead of heading off to a big firm she added an MBA from Harvard to her resume and went to Wall Street to make money. There she met Ronald Clark, a Republican fund-raiser and wise man who drifted in and out of Washington each time the Republicans controlled the White House. Monica followed Clark to Treasury, Commerce, State, and Defense. When President Beckwith appointed Clark to be director of Central Intelligence, Monica became the executive director, the second most powerful position in the CIA. When Clark decided to retire, Monica lobbied for the top job, and Beckwith gave it to her.

Ronald Clark left her a CIA in disarray. A series of other spy cases, including the Aldrich Ames case, had devastated morale. The Agency had failed to predict either that India and Pakistan were about to explode nuclear devices or that Iran and North Korea were about to test ballistic missiles capable of hitting their neighbors. During her confirmation hearings, several senators pressed her to justify the size and cost of the Central Intelligence Agency; one wondered aloud whether the United States really needed a CIA now that the Cold War was over.