The Marching Season (20 page)

He reached for a handgun, holstered beneath his armpit, but Spencer fired a burst from his Uzi.

The gunfire blew the soldier off his feet. Spencer moved forward and snatched the handgun from the holster. He crossed the great hall and started up the staircase.

The radio operator in the command center said calmly, “Base to Alpha Five-three-four, base to Alpha Five-three-four, can you hear me? Repeat, can you hear me?”

He turned around and looked at Michael.

“He’s off the air, Mr. Osbourne. I think we have a Brigade gunman loose in the house.”

“Where’s the closest SAS man?”

“Still in the east wing.”

Michael removed the Browning automatic from his coat pocket. He pulled the slider, chambering the first round.

“Get him up here, now!”

Michael slipped through the doorway, into the darkened corridor, and closed the door behind him. He heard Gavin Spencer, clambering up the great staircase, and crouched, holding the Browning with both hands, arms extended. A few seconds later he spotted Spencer, mounting the last flight of stairs.

“Drop the gun, now!” Michael yelled.

Gavin Spencer turned and leveled his Uzi in Michael’s direction. Michael fired two shots. The first sailed past Spencer and shattered one of the classical busts along the staircase. The second hit Spencer in the left shoulder and drove him back.

Spencer kept hold of the Uzi and fired a burst along the corridor. Michael, armed only with the Browning and with nowhere to take cover, was no match for a terrorist with an Uzi. He turned the knob of the door behind him and dived back into the command center.

He slammed the door and locked it.

“Get down!”

Graham Seymour and the other officers in the room hit the floor as Gavin Spencer, standing outside in the corridor, fired through the wall and the door.

Each bedroom on the wing was connected to the adjoining room by a communicating doorway. Michael ran to the doorway and entered the next room. He repeated the move twice more, until he found himself in the Chinese bedroom.

Outside, in the corridor, he could hear Spencer, breathing heavily, obviously in pain. Michael crossed the room and leaned against the wall next to the doorway.

Spencer fired a short burst from the Uzi, splintering the door, and kicked it open. As he stepped into the room Michael struck him in the side of the head with the butt of his Browning.

Spencer buckled but did not fall.

Michael hit him a second time.

Spencer fell to the floor, and the Uzi tumbled from his grasp.

Michael leaped on top of him, clutching Spencer’s throat with one hand and holding the Browning to his head with the other. Outside in the corridor he could hear the clatter of the approaching SAS men.

“Don’t move a fucking muscle,” Michael said.

Spencer tried to throw him off. Michael pressed the barrel of the Browning into the wound in Spencer’s shoulder. Spencer screamed in pain and lay still.

Two SAS men pounded into the room, guns trained on Spencer. Graham Seymour arrived a few seconds later. Michael ripped the balaclava from Spencer’s head. He smiled as he recognized the face.

“Oh, my goodness,” Michael said, looking at Graham. “Look who we have here.”

“Gavin, darling,” Graham said lazily. “So glad you could drop by.”

Rebecca Wells watched it all unfold from the blind in the North Wood. The gunfire had ended, and the night was filled with the sound of distant sirens. The first police cars raced along the entrance road, followed by a pair of ambulances. The men had walked straight into a trap, and it was her fault.

She tried to control her anger and think clearly. The British had certainly been watching them the entire time. There were probably agents in the campgrounds, agents who had followed her as she reconnoitered Hartley Hall. She understood that she had few options now. If she went back to the caravan or tried to hide in the North Wood, she would be arrested.

She had three hours before first light—three hours to get as far from the Norfolk Coast as possible. The Vauxhall was no good; it was back at the caravan, almost certainly being watched by the police.

If she was to escape Norfolk, she had only one choice.

She had to walk.

She picked up her rucksack. Inside was her money, her maps, and her Walther automatic. Norwich lay twenty miles to the south. She could be there by midday. She could purchase a change of clothing, check into a hotel to clean herself up, buy hair dye at a chemist, and change her appearance. From Norwich she could take a bus farther south to Harwich, where there was a large European ferry terminal. She could take an overnight ferry to Holland and be on the Continent by morning.

She removed the gun from her rucksack, pulled on her hood, and started walking.

MARCH

CHAPTER 29

AMSTERDAM * PARIS

Amsterdam was a city Delaroche loved, but not even Amsterdam, with its gabled houses and picturesque canals, could lift the gray fog of depression that had settled over him that winter. He had taken a flat in a house overlooking a small canal running between the Herengracht and the Singel. The rooms were large and airy, with vaulted windows and French doors that opened onto the water, but Delaroche kept the blinds drawn except when he was working.

The flat was bare except for his easels and his bed and a large chair near the French doors where he sat and read late into most evenings. Two bicycles were propped against the wall in the entrance hall, an Italian sport racer, which he used for long rides in the flat Dutch countryside, and a German-made mountain bike for the cobblestones and bricks of central Amsterdam. He refused to keep them in the lockup outside the house as the rest of the tenants did; there was a huge black market for stolen bicycles in Amsterdam, even for the rickety one-speed coasters that most people rode. His mountain bike would not have survived more than a few minutes.

Uncharacteristically, he had grown obsessed with his own face. Several times each day he would go into the bathroom and stare at his reflection in the glass. He had never been a vain man, but he hated what he saw now, because it offended his artistic sense of proportion and symmetry. Each day he made a pencil sketch of his face to document the slow healing process. At night, lying alone in his bed, he toyed with the collagen implants in his cheeks.

Finally, the incisions healed and the swelling went down, and his features settled into a boring, rather ugly stew. Leroux, the plastic surgeon, had been right; Delaroche did not recognize himself anymore. Only the eyes were the same, sharp and distinct, but they were now surrounded by dullness and mediocrity.

The security requirements of his trade had prevented Delaroche from painting his own face, but shortly after coming to Amsterdam he produced an intensely personal work of self-portraiture—a hideous man staring into a mirror and seeing a beautiful reflection staring back at him. The reflection was Delaroche before the surgery. He had to work from memory because he had no photographs of his old face. He kept the work for a few days, leaning against the wall of his studio, but paranoia eventually won out, and he shredded the canvas and burned it in the fireplace.

Some nights, when he was bored or restless, Delaroche went to the nightclubs around the Leidseplein. Before, he had avoided bars and nightclubs because he tended to attract too much attention from women. Now he could sit for hours without being bothered.

That morning he rose early and made coffee. He logged on to the computer, checked his E-mail, and read newspapers on-line until the German girl in his bed stirred.

He had forgotten her name—something like Ingrid, maybe Eva. She had childbearing hips and heavy breasts. She had dyed her hair black to appear more sophisticated. Now, in the gray morning light, Delaroche could see she was a child, twenty at most. There was something of Astrid Vogel in her awkwardness. He felt angry with himself. He had seduced her for the challenge of it—like making a steep ascent on his bike at the end of a long ride—and now he just wanted her to leave.

She rose and wrapped her body in a sheet.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“In the kitchen,” he said, without looking up from his computer screen.

She drank her coffee German style, with lots of heavy cream. She smoked one of Delaroche’s cigarettes and eyed him silently as he read.

“I have to go to Paris now,” he said.

“Take me with you.”

“No.”

He spoke quietly but firmly. Once, when he used that tone of voice, a girl like her might have been nervous or anxious to leave his presence, but she just stared at him over her coffee cup and smiled. He suspected it was his face.

“I’m not finished with you,” she said.

“There isn’t time.”

She pouted playfully.

“When am I going to see you again?”

“You’re not.”

“Come on,” she said. “I want to know more about you.”

“No, you don’t,” he said, shutting off the computer.

She kissed him and padded away. Her clothes were strewn across the floor: ripped black jeans, a flannel lumberjack shirt, a black concert T-shirt with the name of a rock band that Delaroche had never heard of. When she finished dressing she stood before him and said, “Are you sure you won’t take me to Paris?”

“Quite sure,” he said resolutely, but there was something about her that he liked. He said gently, “I’ll be back tomorrow evening. Come at nine o’clock. I’ll make you dinner.”

“I don’t want dinner,” she said. “I want you.”

Delaroche shook his head. “I’m too old for you.”

“You’re not too old. Your body is wonderful, and you have an interesting face.”

“Interesting?”

“Yes, interesting.”

She looked around the room at the canvases leaning against the walls.

“Are you going to Paris to work?” she asked.

“Yes,” Delaroche said.

Delaroche took a taxi to Amsterdam’s Centraal Station and purchased a first-class ticket on the morning train to Paris. He bought newspapers at a gift shop in the terminal and read them as the train raced through the flat Dutch countryside into Belgium.

The news that morning intrigued him. During the night a Protestant paramilitary group from Northern Ireland had tried to assassinate the American ambassador to Britain while he was spending the weekend at a country house in Norfolk. According to the newspapers, Special Branch agents had killed three members of the group and arrested two others. The alleged leader of the Ulster Freedom Brigade, a man named Kyle Blake, had been arrested in Portadown. Police were looking for a woman connected to the group.

Delaroche folded the newspaper and looked out the window. He wondered whether Michael Osbourne, the ambassador’s son-in-law, was somehow involved in the incident. The Director had told him in Mykonos that Osbourne had been brought back to the CIA to deal with Northern Ireland.

The train drew into the Gare du Nord in Paris in the early afternoon. Delaroche collected his small grip from the luggage rack. He passed through the station quickly and caught a taxi outside. He was staying at a small hotel on the rue de Rivoli overlooking the Tuileries Gardens. He told the driver to drop him a few blocks away, on the rue Saint-Honore, and he walked the rest of the way.

He checked into the hotel as a Dutchman and spoke accented French to the desk clerk. They gave him a garreted room on the top floor with a fine view of the gardens and the Seine bridges.

He slipped a clip into his Beretta pistol and went out.

Dr. Maurice Leroux, cosmetic surgeon, kept an office in a fashionable building on the avenue Victor Hugo, near the Arc de Triomphe. Delaroche, without giving his name, confirmed by telephone that the doctor was in that day. He told the receptionist he would be around later to see him and hung up abruptly.

He sat at the window table of a cafe across the street and waited for Leroux to come out. Shortly before five o’clock Leroux emerged. He wore a gray cashmere overcoat, and he seemed to be the last man in Paris to actually sport a beret. He walked quickly and appeared pleased with himself. Delaroche left money on the table and went out.

Leroux walked to the Arc de Triomphe, then circled the Place Charles de Gaulle and strolled down the avenue des Champs-Elysees. He entered Fouquet’s restaurant and was greeted by a middle-aged woman. Delaroche recognized her; she was a minor actress who played bit roles on French television dramas.

The maitre d’ showed Leroux and the aging actress into the club side of the restaurant. Delaroche took a small table on the public side, where he could see the door. He ordered a hash of potatoes and ground meat and drank a half bottle of decent Bordeaux. When there still was no sign of Leroux, he ordered cheese and cafe au lait.

It was nearly two hours before Leroux and his companion left the restaurant. Delaroche watched them through the glass. It was windy, and Leroux turned up the collar of his cashmere coat dramatically. He gave the actress a theatrical kiss and touched her cheek, as if admiring his work. He helped her into a car. Then he purchased newspapers and magazines from a kiosk and started walking through the buzzing evening crowds along the Champs-Elysees.

Delaroche paid his check and went after him.

Maurice Leroux was a walker. With his newspapers tucked beneath his arm, he walked along the Champs-Elysees to the Place de la Concorde. He had no reason to suspect he was being followed, and therefore tailing him was very easy. Delaroche had only to keep pace with him along the busy sidewalks. The cut of his expensive jacket, and the farcical beret, made him easy to spot among the crowds. He crossed the Seine at the Pont de la Concorde and walked for a long time on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Delaroche lit a cigarette and smoked as he walked.

Leroux entered a cafe bistro near the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres and sat down at the bar. Delaroche entered a moment later and sat at a small table near the door. Leroux drank wine and chatted with the barman. A pretty girl ignored his flirting.

After a half hour Leroux left the bar, by now thoroughly drunk. This pleased Delaroche, because it would make his task easier. Leroux teetered along the Boulevard Saint-Germain through the light rain and entered a small side street near the Mabillon metro station.

He stopped at the entrance of an apartment building and punched in the security code. Delaroche slipped in the door behind him before it could close. They entered the lift together, an old-fashioned cage threaded through the middle of the staircase. Leroux punched the fifth floor, Delaroche the sixth. Delaroche chatted about the miserable weather in Parisian-accented French. Leroux grunted something unintelligible. Clearly, he did not recognize his patient.

Leroux got off at his floor. As the lift rose, Delaroche peered through the grill and watched Leroux enter his apartment. He stepped out of the lift on the sixth floor and walked down one flight of stairs. He knocked gently on Leroux’s door.

The doctor answered a moment later, face perplexed, and said, “Can I help you?”

“Yes,” Delaroche said, and he punched Leroux in the throat with a knifelike fist. The blow left Leroux doubled over in agony, speechless, gasping for air. Delaroche closed the door.

“Who are you?” Leroux rasped. “What do you want?”

“I’m the one whose face you took a hammer to.”

He realized it was Delaroche.

“Dear God,” he whispered.

Delaroche removed the silenced Beretta pistol from his coat.

Leroux began to tremble violently. “I can be trusted,” he said. “I’ve done many men like you.”

“No, you haven’t,” Delaroche said, and he shot him twice through the heart.

Delaroche arrived back in Amsterdam early the following afternoon. He returned to his flat by taxi and packed a blue nylon backpack with his painting kit: two small canvases, paints, a Polaroid camera, a portable easel, and the Beretta pistol. He rode his mountain bike along the cobblestone streets to a spot on the Keizersgracht where there was a good bridge with lights on the arches that came on after dark.

He locked his bike and walked around the bridge for some time until he found a perspective he liked, with houseboats in the foreground and a trio of magnificent gabled houses in the background. He removed his camera from the backpack and made several Polaroid photographs of the scene, first in black and white, so he could see the essential forms and lines of the setting, then in color.

He set to work, painting quickly, instinctively, racing to capture the fleeting twilight before darkness took hold. When the lights flickered to life on the bridge he set down his brush and simply watched. He studied the reflection of the lights on the smooth surface of the canal for a long time. He waited for the painting to cast its spell—waited for the image of Maurice Leroux’s dead eyes to evaporate from his mind—but neither happened.

A long water taxi slid past, and the reflection of the bridge lights dissolved in its wake. Delaroche packed away his things. He rode along the Keizergracht, gingerly holding the canvas in his right hand. In any other city he might have drawn stares with such a pose, but not in Amsterdam.

Delaroche crossed the Keizergracht at Ree Straat, then pedaled slowly along the Prinsengracht, until the old houseboat appeared before him. He chained his bicycle to a lamppost, leaned the canvas against the front tire, and hopped onto the deck.

The
Krista
was forty-five feet long, with a wheelhouse aft, a slender prow, and a row of portholes along the gunwale. The green and white paint was flaking with neglect. The hatch at the top of the companionway was secured with a heavy padlock. Delaroche still had the key. He unlocked the hatch and stepped down the companionway into the salon, which was dark except for the soft glow of the yellow streetlamps leaking through the dirty skylights.

The boat had been Astrid Vogel’s. They had lived here together the previous winter, after Delaroche had hired her to assist him with a series of particularly difficult assassinations. He could imagine her now, her long body bumping about in the cramped spaces of the houseboat. He looked at the bed and thought of making love to her with rain drumming on the skylight. Astrid had nightmares; she used to pummel him in her sleep. Once, she awakened after a bad dream, surprised to find Delaroche in her bed. She nearly shot him before he could wrench the gun from her hand.

Delaroche had not been back to the
Krista
since then. He spent several minutes rifling cabinets and drawers, looking for any trace of himself he might have left behind. He found nothing. There was nothing of Astrid either, just some appalling clothing and a few well-thumbed books. Astrid was used to living in hiding. She had been a member of the Red Army Faction and had spent many years in places like Beirut and Tripoli and Damascus. She knew how to come and go without leaving tracks.

Delaroche’s obsessive independence made him incapable of loving another, but he had cared for Astrid and, more important, he had trusted her. She was the only woman who knew the truth about him. He could relax around her. They had planned to go to the Caribbean when the job was done—to live together in something approaching a marriage—but Michael Osbourne’s wife had killed her on Shelter Island.