The Marching Season (17 page)

CHAPTER 25

LONDON

“It’s called Hartley Hall,” Graham Seymour said, late that morning in Wheaton’s office. “It’s located here, along the north Norfolk Coast.” He tapped at the large Ordnance Survey map with the tip of his pen. “It has several hundred acres of grounds for walking and riding, and of course the beach is nearby. In short, it’s the perfect sort of place for an American ambassador to spend a quiet weekend in the country.”

“Who owns it?” Michael asked.

“A friend of the Intelligence Service.”

“A close friend?”

“Did his bit during the war and a few odd jobs during the fifties and sixties, but nothing heavy.”

“Anything public that could link him to British Intelligence?”

“Absolutely not,” Graham said. “The Ulster Freedom Brigade would have no way of knowing that the ambassador’s host was connected to the Service.”

Wheaton said, “What are you thinking, Michael?”

“That Douglas wants to spend a weekend outside London in the English countryside, a
private
weekend with minimal security at the house of an old friend. We put it on his schedule and feed it to the woman through McDaniels. With a bit of luck the Ulster Freedom Brigade will bite.”

“And we’ll have an SAS team waiting for them,” Graham said. “The scenario has one other important benefit: There will be no possibility of civilian casualties, because of the remote location.”

“Arresting people isn’t really the specialty of the SAS,” Wheaton said. “If we go through with this, and the Ulster Freedom Brigade takes the bait, a lot of blood is going to be spilled.” He looked first at Graham, who remained silent, and then at Michael.

“Better their blood than Douglas’s,” Michael said. “I recommend we do it.”

“I need to run it up the food chain,” Wheaton said. “The White House and the State Department are going to need to sign off on this one. It might take a few hours.”

“What about the woman?” Michael said.

“We followed her this morning when she left McDaniels’s flat,” Graham said. “She was telling McDaniels the truth. She’s living in a flat in Earl’s Court. Moved in a couple of weeks ago. We have a team watching the flat.”

“Where is she now?”

“It appears she’s sleeping.”

“I’m glad someone’s getting some sleep around here,” Wheaton said.

He picked up his secure phone and dialed Monica Tyler’s office at Langley.

“This is all your idea, isn’t it?” Preston McDaniels said. “You’re a real sonofabitch. Anyone can see that.”

They were seated on a bench overlooking the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Wind moved in the willow trees and made ripples on the surface of the lake. Clouds, heavy with coming rain, floated above them. Michael tried to spot Graham’s watchers. Was it the man tossing bread crumbs to the ducks? The woman on the next bench reading Josephine Hart? Perhaps the lanky blond boy in the dark blue anorak doing tai chi on the lawn?

Twenty minutes earlier, Michael had shown McDaniels the videotape of his lover sneaking into his study and picking through the contents of his briefcase. McDaniels had nearly become physically ill. He had demanded fresh air, so they had walked in silence, across Mayfair and along the footpaths of Hyde Park, until they had reached the lake. McDaniels was trembling; Michael could almost feel the park bench vibrating with his shaking. He remembered how he had felt when he learned Sarah Randolph had been working for the KGB. He had wanted to hate her but could not. He suspected Preston McDaniels felt precisely the same way about the woman he knew as Rachel Archer.

“Did you get any sleep?” he asked mildly.

“Of course not.” The wind gusted, lifting his gray hair and exposing his bald spot. He self-consciously coaxed it back into place. “How could I sleep knowing that you bastards were probably listening to my every breath?”

Michael did not want to dispel McDaniels’s notion that they were watching his every move and listening to his every utterance. He lit a cigarette and offered one to McDaniels.

“Vile habit,” McDaniels snorted, and waved his hand. He glared at Michael as though he were an untouchable.

Michael didn’t mind; it was good for McDaniels to feel superior for a moment, even over something so trivial.

“How long?” he said. “How long do I have to do this?”

“Not long,” Michael said casually, as though McDaniels had asked how long it might be before the next train arrived.

“My God, why can’t I get a straight answer from you people about anything?”

“Because there are very few straight answers in this line of work.”

“It’s your line of work, not mine.” McDaniels waved his hand violently. “Jesus Christ! Put that thing out, will you!”

Michael tossed the cigarette onto the pavement.

“Who is she?” McDaniels asked. “What is she?”

“As far as you’re concerned she’s Rachel Archer, a starving playwright who’s working as a waitress at Ristorante Riccardo.”

“Dammit, I want to know! I have to know! I need to know that this whole ugly business might come to some good.”

Michael could not argue with the logic of McDaniels’s request. Oftentimes, agent-running is about motivation, and if Preston McDaniels was going to get through the operation, he needed encouragement.

“We don’t know her real name,” Michael said. “Not yet, anyway. We’re working on it. She’s a member of the Ulster Freedom Brigade. They’re planning to assassinate my father-in-law. She was using you to gain access to his schedule and find the best time to make their attempt.”

“My God, how could she? She’s such a wonderful—”

“She’s not the person you think she is.”

“How could I have been such a fool?” McDaniels was staring somewhere into the middle distance. “I knew she was too young for me. That she was too pretty. But I allowed myself to actually believe that she had fallen in love with me.”

“No one’s blaming you,” Michael lied.

“So what happens when it’s all over?”

“You go on with your job as if nothing happened.”

“How can I?”

“It will be easier than you think,” Michael said.

“And what about her, whoever she is?”

“We don’t know yet,” Michael said.

“Yes, you do. You know everything. You’re setting her up, aren’t you.”

Michael stood abruptly, signaling that it was time to leave. McDaniels remained seated.

“How long?” he said. “How long until this is over?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long?” he repeated.

“Not long.”

Later that afternoon Michael sat in Wheaton’s office, reviewing the new addition to Ambassador Douglas Cannon’s schedule, a private visit the following weekend to the home of a friend in the Norfolk countryside. At the ambassador’s request, security for the visit would be extremely light, a two-man Special Branch team with no American support. Michael finished reading it and handed it across the desk to Wheaton.

“Think they’ll bite?” Wheaton asked.

“They should.”

“How’s our boy holding up under the strain?”

“McDaniels?”

Wheaton nodded.

“As well as you might expect.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we don’t have a lot of time.”

“Then this had better work.”

Wheaton handed the paper back to Michael.

“Put it in his briefcase and send it home with him tonight.”

It was just after four o’clock the next morning when Rebecca Wells rose from Preston McDaniels’s bed and let herself into his study. She sat down at the desk, quietly opened the briefcase, and withdrew a sheaf of papers. Attached to the ambassador’s usual schedule of official events was a note about a private weekend in the Norfolk countryside.

Rebecca could feel her heart hammering inside her chest as she read the memo.

It was perfect: a remote location, with plenty of advance notice for planning purposes. She took her time copying down the details. She didn’t want to make a mistake.

When she finished she felt a fierce pride. She had done her job well, just as she had done in Belfast. Eamonn Dillon was dead because of the information she had provided Kyle Blake and Gavin Spencer, and soon Ambassador Douglas Cannon would be dead too.

She turned off the light and went back to bed.

At the base camp in Evelyn Square, Michael Osbourne and Graham Seymour stood before the video monitors. They watched as she carefully recorded the details of the memo concerning the ambassador’s trip to Norfolk. They could sense her excitement at the discovery. When she turned off the light and left the room, Graham turned to Michael and said, “Think she took the bait?”

“Hook, line, and sinker.”

The following day they watched her. They went with her to the dreary cafe outside the Earl’s Court Underground stop where she had tea and a bun for breakfast. They listened when she telephoned Riccardo Ferrari at the restaurant and told him she had a family emergency, an aunt who had taken ill in Newcastle; she needed a couple of days off, four at the most. Riccardo screamed a series of obscenities at her, first in Italian, then in heavily accented English. But he won the affection of Graham Seymour’s listeners when he said, “Take care of your poor aunt. There’s nothing more important than family. When you’re ready to come back, you come back.”

Then they listened as she telephoned Preston McDaniels at his desk at the embassy and told him she would be going away for a few days. They held their breath when McDaniels asked to see her for a few minutes before she left. They breathed a sigh of relief when she told him there wasn’t time.

And when she boarded a train for Liverpool, they let her run.

Preston McDaniels replaced the receiver and sat at his desk. A secretary who spotted him through the open door at that moment told Michael later that poor Preston looked as though he had just been told of a death. He jumped up suddenly, announced he needed to run an errand, and said he would be back in fifteen minutes. He took his raincoat from its hanger and rushed out of the embassy, across Grosvenor Square, toward the park.

He knew they were following him, Wheaton and Osbourne and the rest of them; he could feel it. He wanted to be rid of them. He wanted to never see them again. What would they do? Would they grab him? Snatch him off the streets? Bundle him into a car? He had read his fair share of spy novels. How would the hero get away from the villains in a spy novel? He would get lost in a crowd.

When he reached Park Lane he hurried north toward Marble Arch. He ducked into the Underground station, slipped through the turnstiles, and walked quickly along the connecting passageway to the platform.

A train was arriving as he reached the platform. He stepped into the carriage and stood near the doors. At the next stop, Bond Street, he stepped out of the train, crossed to the opposite platform, and boarded another train back to Marble Arch. At Marble Arch he performed the same maneuver, and a moment later he was heading east across London, feeling quite alone.

Graham Seymour rang Michael from MI5 headquarters.

“I’m afraid your man has vanished.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we lost him,” Graham said. “He lost us, actually. He performed quite a routine on the Underground. He’s not half bad.”

“Where?”

“Central Line between Marble Arch and Bond Street.”

“Dammit. What are you doing about it?”

“Well, we’re trying to find him, aren’t we, darling.”

“Call me if you hear anything.”

“Right.”

At Tottenham Court Road, Preston McDaniels left the Central Line train and walked through the connecting passageway to the Northern Line. How fitting, he thought; the dreaded Northern Line. Antiquated, wheezing, clattering, the Northern Line was forever breaking down at the height of the rush. To those forced to endure its fickle moods, it was the Misery Line. The Black Line. It was perfect, Preston thought. The London tabloids would have a field day with it.

What was it Michael Osbourne had said?
You go on with your life as if nothing had happened.
But how could he? He felt the platform begin to vibrate. He turned and peered into the darkness of the tunnel and saw the faint light of the approaching train.

He thought of her, beneath his body, her back arched to him, and then he pictured her in his study, stealing his secrets. He heard her voice on the telephone.
I’m afraid I’m going to have to go away for a few days…. No, I’m sorry, Preston, but I can’t see you just now….

Preston McDaniels looked at his watch. They would be worried about him by now, wondering where he had gone. There was a staff meeting in ten minutes. He was going to miss it.

The train burst from the tunnel with a rush of hot air and swept into the station. Preston McDaniels took one step closer to the edge of the platform. Then he leaped onto the track.

CHAPTER 26

PORTADOWN * LONDON * COUNTY TYRONE

The following evening Rebecca Wells was back in Portadown, sitting in a booth in McConville’s pub. Gavin Spencer entered first, followed five minutes later by Kyle Blake. The pub was crowded. Rebecca Wells spoke quietly beneath the din, briefing Blake and Spencer on what she had discovered in the briefcase of the American.

“When does Cannon arrive?” Blake asked simply.

“Next Saturday,” Rebecca said.

“And how long does he stay?”

“One night, the Saturday. Then he returns to London early Sunday afternoon.”

“That gives us five days.” Blake turned to Gavin Spencer. “Can you pull it off in that amount of time?”

Spencer nodded. “We just need the weapons. If we can get our hands on the guns, Ambassador Douglas Cannon is a dead man.”

Kyle Blake thought it over a moment, rubbing the ink and nicotine stains on his fingers. Then he looked up at Spencer and said, “So we’ll get the guns.”

“Are you sure, Kyle?”

“You’re not losing your nerve, are you?”

“Maybe we should wait a wee bit. Let things cool down.”

“We don’t have time to wait, Gavin. Every week that goes by is a victory for the supporters of the accords. Either we destroy the peace agreement now or we’re stuck with it forever. And it’s not just this generation that will pay the price. It’s our children, our grandchildren. I can’t live with that.”

Blake stood up abruptly and zipped his jacket closed.

“Get those guns, Gavin, or I’ll find someone who will.”

As the three leaders of the Ulster Freedom Brigade were departing McConville’s pub, Graham Seymour was arriving at the American embassy. Wheaton’s office felt like the command bunker of an army in retreat. The suicide of Preston McDaniels had ignited a firestorm in Washington, and Wheaton had been on the telephone-for most of the past twenty-four hours, trying unsuccessfully to put it out. The State Department was furious with the Agency for their handling of the affair; indeed, Douglas Cannon had been placed in the unenviable position of secretly protesting the actions of his own son-in-law. President Beck-with had summoned Monica Tyler to the White House and read her the riot act. Monica had taken out her anger on Wheaton and Michael.

“Please tell us you have some good news,” Michael said, as Graham sat down.

“Actually, I do,” Graham said. “Scotland Yard’s decided to play ball. Later this evening they’ll put out a statement that the suicide at Tottenham Court Road was an escaped mental patient. The Northern Line is notorious for that sort of thing. There’s a psychiatric hospital in Stockwell, south of the river.”

“Thank God,” Wheaton said.

Michael felt himself relax slightly. The suicide needed to be kept secret if the operation was to continue. If the Ulster Freedom Brigade learned McDaniels had jumped in front of a Northern Line train, they might very well conclude the information they had stolen from him was tainted.

Graham said, “How will you cover up things here?”

“Fortunately, McDaniels has no family to speak of,” Wheaton said. “State has reluctantly given us some latitude. As far as the cover story goes, McDaniels had to return to Washington for two weeks. If the woman calls here looking for him, she’ll be given that story and a personal message from McDaniels.”

“The woman has a name, by the way,” Graham said. “E-Four picked her up when she arrived in Belfast early this morning. Her real name is Rebecca Wells. Her husband was Ronnie Wells, a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force intelligence section who was murdered by the IRA in ‘ninety-two. It looks as though Rebecca has picked up the threads of her husband’s work.”

“And the RUC is giving her room to run?” Michael asked.

“They followed her to Portadown in order to establish her identity, but that’s as far as it goes,” Graham said. “As of right now she’s running free.”

“Is the SAS on board?”

“I’m meeting with them at their headquarters in Hereford tomorrow to brief them. You’re both welcome to attend. Strange lot, the SAS. I think you might actually enjoy it.”

Wheaton stood up and rubbed his red, swollen eyes.

“Gentlemen, the ball is in the court of the Ulster Freedom Brigade.” He pulled on his suit jacket over his wrinkled shirt and headed for the door. “I don’t know about either of you, but I need some sleep. Don’t bother me unless it’s urgent.”

The first night had been clear and calm and bitterly cold. Kyle Blake and Gavin Spencer decided to wait; one more night would make no difference, and the forecast looked promising. The second night was perfect: thick cloud cover to weaken the infrared glasses of the SAS men, wind and rain to help cover the sound of their approach. Kyle Blake approved, and Spencer dispatched two of his best men to do the job. One was a British army veteran who had done time abroad as a mercenary. The other was a former UDA gunman, the same lad who had killed Ian Morris. Spencer had code-named the first Yeats and the second Wilde. He sent them into the field a few hours after sundown and instructed them to attack an hour or so before dawn—just like the Peep O’Day Boys.

The farmhouse stood in the basin of a small glen. Around the farm were several acres of cleared pasturelands, but beyond the fence line rose hills covered with dense trees. It was on one of these hillsides, the one directly east of the farmhouse, that the E4 and SAS men had established their watch post. On the second night, the hillside lay beneath a blanket of low, thick cloud.

Yeats and Wilde wore black. They used coal dust to darken their pale Ulster complexions. They approached from the east, through the thick pine, up and down the rolling terrain, moving just a few feet each minute. Sometimes they lay very still for several minutes at a time, bodies pressed to the sodden earth, peering at their quarry through night-vision binoculars. When they had closed to within a quarter mile they separated, Yeats moving off to the north, Wilde to the south.

By 4 A.M. both men were exhausted, soaked to the skin, and bitterly cold. Yeats had been trained by the British army and was better prepared, mentally and physically, for a night on a freezing hillside. Wilde was not; he had grown up in the Shankill of West Belfast, and his experience had been on the streets, not in the field. In the final minutes before the attack, he wondered whether he could go forward. Hypothermia had set in; his hands and feet were numb, yet no longer felt the cold. He was shivering violently, and he feared he wouldn’t be able to fire his gun when the time came.

At 5 A.M. both gunmen were in position. Yeats, lying on his stomach behind a large tree, watched the SAS man. He was sitting in a blind, covered with sprigs of brush and small tree limbs. Yeats took out his gun, a Walther 9-millimeter semiautomatic with a silencer fitted into the barrel. Wilde carried the same weapon. Both men knew they were going to be heavily outgunned by their opponents. If they were to survive the encounter, they would have to make their first shots count.

Yeats rose to one knee suddenly and began firing. The silenced Walther made almost no sound. The first shots struck the SAS man in the torso with a dull thud and knocked him backward. By the sound of it the SAS man was wearing a vest, which meant he was almost certainly still alive.

Yeats scrambled to his feet and rushed forward through the darkness. When he was a few feet away the SAS man sat up suddenly and fired. His weapon was silenced too, and the only sound it made was a faint metallic clicking.

Yeats threw himself to the ground, and the shots sailed harmlessly over his head, splintering trees. Yeats rolled and came to rest on his stomach, arms outstretched, the Walther in his hands. He took aim and squeezed the trigger twice rapidly, just as the army had taught him. The shots struck the SAS man in the face. He fell to the ground, dead.

Yeats rushed forward, tore the automatic rifle from the grasp of the dead SAS man, and ran to the spot where he knew the E4 men were hiding.

Wilde had an easier time of things. The SAS man that he was assigned to kill had reacted to the sound of bodies rustling the heather. He rose, pivoted quickly in several directions, then ran to the assistance of his comrade. Wilde stepped from behind a tree as the SAS man moved past him. He leveled the gun at the back of his head and fired. The soldier’s arms opened wide and he fell forward. Wilde grabbed the dead man’s gun and raced forward, following Yeats through the trees.

The two E4 men—Marks and Sparks—were hidden in their blind, concealed by camouflage tarpaulins, tree limbs, and undergrowth. Marks was just coming awake. Yeats shot him several times through his sleeping bag. Sparks, who was on duty, was reaching for a small automatic. Wilde shot him through the heart.

It was just after five o’clock as Gavin Spencer sped through the village of Cranagh, then along the narrow B-road toward the farmhouse. He pulled into the muddy drive and shut down the engine. He walked to the back of the house through the darkness, picking his way through broken crates and old rusting farm equipment. He spotted them a moment later, descending the hillside in the rain. Spencer stood in the yard, hands in his pockets, as the two men crossed the pasture. For a moment he would have done anything to trade places with them; then he saw their wet, soiled clothing and the haunted look in their eyes, and he knew there was nothing to celebrate.

“It’s done,” the one called Wilde said simply.

“How many?” Spencer asked.

“Four.”

Yeats tossed a rifle toward Spencer in the darkness. Spencer deftly pulled his hands from his pockets and caught the rifle before it struck him in the chest.

“There’s a souvenir for you,” Yeats said. “The rifle of a dead SAS man.”

Spencer pulled back the slider on the weapon, chambering a round.

“Anything left in this one?”

“He never got off a fuckin’ shot,” Wilde said.

“Get in the car,” Spencer told them. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

Spencer carried the gun across the yard and let himself into the house. Sam Dalton, the older of the two brothers, was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea and smoking nervously. He wore blue warm-up trousers, moccasins, and a woolen pullover sweater. His face was unshaven, his eyes heavy with sleep.

“What the fuck’s going on out there, Gavin?” he said.

“We eliminated your friends on the hillside. You’ve any more of that?” he said, nodding at the tea.

Dalton ignored Spencer’s request. “Eliminated them?” he said, his eyes suddenly wide. “And what happens when it’s discovered that you’ve eliminated them? I said I’d hide a few guns and a wee bit of Semtex for you, Gavin. You didn’t tell me you were going to bring down the Special Branch and the British army on top of my fuckin’ head.”

“You’ve nothing to worry about, Sam,” Spencer said. “I’m taking all of it tonight. Even if the Branch and the army break down the door, there’ll be nothing for them to find.”

“All of it?” Sam Dalton asked incredulously.

“All of it,” Spencer replied. “Where’s your brother?”

Dalton looked up at the ceiling and said, “Upstairs sleeping.”

“Start pulling out the guns and the Semtex. I want a word with Sleeping Beauty. I’ll be down in a minute.”

Sam Dalton nodded and went downstairs into the cellar. Gavin Spencer went upstairs and found Christopher Dalton asleep in his bed, mouth open, snoring softly. Spencer withdrew a silenced Walther automatic pistol from his coat pocket, leaned down, and slipped the barrel into the sleeping man’s mouth. Christopher Dalton gagged and awakened with a jolt, eyes wide. Spencer pulled the trigger; blood and brain tissue exploded onto the pillow and the bedding. Spencer put the gun away and walked out of the room, leaving Christopher Dalton’s twitching body on the bed.

“Where’s Chris?” Dalton asked, when Spencer arrived in the cellar.

“Still sleeping,” Spencer said. “I didn’t have the heart to wake him.”

Dalton finished packing the guns and the explosives. When he was finished, three canvas duffels lay side by side on the floor. He was kneeling, zipping up the last of the bags, when Spencer pressed the barrel of the captured SAS automatic against the back of his head.

“Gavin, no,” he pleaded. “Please, Gavin.”

“Don’t worry, Sam. You’re going to a better place than this.”

Spencer pulled the trigger.

At 6 A.M. the telephone rang on Michael’s bedside table in the guest bedroom at Winfield House. He rolled over and snatched the receiver before it could ring a second time. It was Graham Seymour, telephoning from his home in Belgravia.

“Get dressed. I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

Graham hung up abruptly. Michael showered and dressed quickly. Twenty minutes later a chauffeured Rover pulled into the drive at Winfield House. Michael got in next to Graham Seymour.

Graham handed him coffee in a paper cup. He looked like a man who had been awakened with bad news. His eyes were red-rimmed, his shave was patchy and obviously hurried. As the car sped through the dawn light of Regent’s Park, Graham quietly described what had happened overnight at the farmhouse in the Sperrin Mountains.

“Jesus Christ,” Michael said softly.

The car raced along the Outer Circle, then east a short distance on the Euston Road before heading south on Tottenham Court Road. Michael clutched the armrest as the driver wove in and out of the early-morning traffic.

“Mind telling me where we’re going?” Michael asked.

“I thought I’d surprise you.”

“I detest surprises.”

“I know,” Graham said, managing a brief smile.

Five minutes later they were speeding along Whitehall. The car drew to a halt at the iron gates guarding the entrance of Downing Street. Graham identified himself to the security officer, and the gates opened. The car moved forward, coming to a stop in front of the world’s most famous doorway. Michael looked at Graham.

“Come along, darling,” Graham said. “Mustn’t keep the great man waiting.”

They entered No. 10 and walked along the front corridor and up the famous staircase hung with the portraits of Tony Blair’s predecessors. An aide showed them into the prime minister’s study. Blair was seated behind a disorderly desk wearing a shirt and tie. A breakfast tray was untouched.