The Marching Season (7 page)

He melted into the teeming slums of south Cairo, ditched the motorbike in an alleyway, and dropped the Beretta down a sewer. Two hours later he boarded an Alitalia flight to Rome.

CHAPTER 9

LONDON

“How long will you be staying in the United Kingdom?” the officer in the passport control booth asked rapturelessly.

“Just a day.”

Michael Osbourne handed over his passport, which bore his real name because the Agency had taken back his false passports upon his retirement—at least the ones they knew about. Over the years several friendly intelligence services had also granted him passports out of professional courtesy. He could travel as a Spaniard, an Italian, an Israeli, or a Frenchman. He even had obtained an Egyptian passport from an asset inside that country’s intelligence service, which permitted him to enter certain Middle Eastern countries as a fellow Arab rather than an outsider. None of those intelligence services had asked for their passports after Michael’s departure from the secret world. They were locked in Douglas Cannon’s safe on Shelter Island.

The inspection of his passport was taking longer than usual. Obviously, it had been flagged by the British security services. The last time Michael was in England he had been caught in the middle of the Sword of Gaza’s attack at Heathrow Airport. He had also conducted an unauthorized meeting with a man named Ivan Drozdov—a KGB defector under the care of MI6—who was murdered later that afternoon.

“Where are you staying in the United Kingdom?” the officer asked tonelessly, reading from the small computer screen in front of him.

“In London,” Michael said.

The officer looked up. “Where in London, Mr. Osbourne?”

Michael gave the officer the address of a hotel in Knights-bridge, which he dutifully wrote down. Michael knew the officer would give the address to his supervisor, and the supervisor would give it to Britain’s internal Security Service, MI5.

“Do you have a reservation at your hotel, Mr. Osbourne?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Is it in your name?”

“Yes.”

The officer handed back the passport. “Enjoy your stay.”

Michael picked up his slender garment bag, passed through customs, and entered the arrival hall. He had telephoned his old London car service from the plane. He scanned the waiting crowd, looking for his driver and, instinctively, any sign of surveillance: a familiar face, a figure that seemed somehow out of place, a set of eyes watching him.

He spotted a small limousine driver in a dark suit holding a cardboard sign that said MR. STAFFORD. Michael crossed the hall and said, “Let’s go.”

“Take your bag, sir?”

“No, thanks.”

Michael slumped down in the backseat of the Rover sedan as it crawled through the thick morning traffic toward the West End. The motorway had given way to the Edwardian facades of the hotels along the Cromwell Road. Michael knew London all too well; he had lived in a flat in Chelsea for more than ten years, when he was working in the field. Most CIA officers stationed abroad work from embassies, with diplomatic jobs for cover. But Michael had worked in counterterrorism, recruiting and running agents in the terrorist playgrounds of Europe and the Middle East. An assignment like that was next to impossible under diplomatic cover, so Michael had operated as an NOC, which in the lexicon of the Agency meant he had “nonofficial cover.” He posed as a salesman for a company that designed computer systems for businesses. The company was a CIA front, but the job permitted Michael to travel throughout Europe and the Middle East without suspicion.

Michael’s control officer, Adrian Carter, used to say that if there ever was a man born and bred to spy it was Michael Osbourne. His father had worked for the OSS during the war and then entered the clandestine service of its successor, the CIA. Michael and his mother, Alexandra, followed him from posting to posting—Rome, Beirut, Athens, Belgrade, and Madrid—with short tours at Headquarters in between. While his father was running Russian spies, Michael and his mother absorbed languages and cultures. Michael’s dark skin and hair allowed him to pass for an Italian or a Spaniard or even a certain type of Lebanese Arab. He used to test himself in markets and cafes, to see how long he could go without being recognized as an outsider. He spoke Italian with a Roman accent and Spanish like a native of Madrid. He struggled a bit with Greek but mastered Arabic so thoroughly the shopkeepers in Beirut’s souk assumed he was Lebanese and didn’t cheat him.

The car arrived at the hotel. Michael paid off the driver and got out. It was a small hotel, with no doorman and no concierge—just a pretty Polish girl behind an oak desk with keys hanging on pegs behind her. He checked in and asked for a 2 P.M. wake-up call.

Retirement had not robbed Michael of a healthy professional paranoia. For five minutes he inspected the room, turning over lamps, opening closet doors, tearing apart the telephone and then carefully reassembling it. He had performed the same ritual in a thousand hotel rooms in a hundred different cities. Only once had he ever found a bug—a Soviet-made museum piece crudely attached to the telephone of a hotel room in Damascus.

His search turned up nothing. He turned on the television and watched the morning news on the BBC.
Northern Ireland secretary Mo Mowlam has vowed that the new Protestant paramilitary group, the Ulster Freedom Brigade, will never be allowed to destroy the Good Friday accords. She has called on the chief constable of the RUC, Ronnie Flanagan, to redouble his efforts to capture the leaders of the terrorist group.
Michael shut off the television and closed his eyes, still dressed in the clothes he had worn on the flight. He slept fitfully, wrestling with his blanket, sweating in his clothing, until the telephone screamed. For an instant he thought he had been transported behind the Iron Curtain, but it was only the flaxen-haired Polish girl at the front desk, gently informing him it was two o’clock.

He ordered coffee, showered, and dressed in jeans, bucks, black mock-turtleneck sweater, and blue blazer. He hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the doorknob and left a telltale in the jamb.

Outside, the sky was the color of gunpowder, and cold wind bent the trees in Hyde Park. He turned up the collar of his overcoat, knotted the scarf at his throat, and he started walking, first along Knightsbridge, then the Brompton Road. He spotted the first watcher: balding, mid-forties, leather jacket, stubble on his chin. Anonymous, ordinary, unthreatening, perfect for pavement work.

He ate an omelette in a French cafe in the Brompton Road and read the
Evening Standard.
A leader of the Muslim fundamentalist group Hamas had been assassinated in Egypt. Michael read the article once, then read it a second time, and thought about it some more as he walked to Harrods. The balding watcher was gone, and a new one was in his place—same model but wearing a forest-green Barbour coat instead of a leather jacket. He entered Harrods, paid an obligatory visit to the shrine to Dodi and Diana, and then took the escalator up. The man in the Barbour jacket followed him. He purchased a Scottish sweater for Douglas and a pair of earrings for Elizabeth. He went downstairs again and meandered through the food hall. A new watcher was trailing him, a rather attractive young woman in jeans, combat-style boots, and a tan quilted jacket.

Night had fallen, and with it came a windblown rain. He left the Harrods bag at the desk of his hotel and flagged down a taxi. For the next hour and a half he moved restlessly about the West End—by taxi, Underground, and bus—through Belgravia, May-fair, Westminster, and finally Sloane Square. He walked south until he reached Chelsea Embankment.

He stood in the rain, looking at the lights of Chelsea Bridge. It had been more than ten years since the night Sarah Randolph was shot on this spot, but the image of her death played out in his thoughts as if it were on videotape. He saw her, walking toward him, long skirt dancing across buckskin boots, the Embankment shining with river mist. Then the man appeared, the black-haired man with brilliant blue eyes and a silenced automatic—the KGB assassin Michael knew only as October, the same man who had tried to murder Michael and Elizabeth on Shelter Island. Michael closed his eyes as Sarah’s exploding face flashed through his thoughts. The Agency had assured him that October was dead, but now, after reading the account of the assassination of Ahmed Hussein in Cairo, he was not so certain.

“I think I’m being followed,” Michael said, standing in the window overlooking Eaton Place.

“You
are
being followed,” Graham Seymour said. “The Department flagged your passport. You were a very naughty boy the last time you paid a visit to our fair island. We picked you up this morning at Heathrow.”

Michael accepted a tumbler of Scotch from Graham and sat down in the wing chair next to the fire. Graham Seymour opened an ebony cigarette box on the coffee table and took out two Dunhills, one for himself and one for Michael. They sat in silence, two old chums who have told each other every story they know and are content just to sit in each other’s presence. Vivaldi played softly on Graham’s elaborate German sound system. Graham closed his gray eyes and savored his cigarette and whisky.

Graham Seymour worked for the counterterrorism division of MI5. Like Michael, he had been a child prodigy. His father had worked closely with John Masterman in the Double Cross operation of MI5 during the war, capturing German spies and playing them back against their masters at the Abwehr in Berlin. He had stayed on with MI5 after the war and worked against the Russians. Harold Seymour was a legend, and his son was forever bumping into his memory at Headquarters and running across his exploits in old case files. Michael understood the pressure this placed on Graham, because he had experienced the same thing in the Agency. The two men had developed a friendship when Michael was based in London. They had shared information from time to time and watched each other’s back. Still, friendships have well-defined limits in the intelligence business, and Michael maintained a healthy professional mistrust of Graham Seymour. He knew Graham would stab him in the back if MI5 ordered him to do so.

“Is it all right for you to be seen with a leper like me?” Michael asked.

“Dinner with an old friend, darling. No harm in that. Besides, I plan to feed them some good gossip about the inner workings of Langley.”

“I haven’t set foot in Langley in over a year.”

“No one ever
really
retires from this business. The Department hounded my father till the day he died. Every time something special came up they sent a couple of nice men round to sit at the feet of the great Harold.”

Michael raised his glass and said, “To the great Harold.”

“Here, here.” Graham drank some of the whisky. “So how is retirement anyway?”

“It sucks.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really,” Michael said. “It was all right for a while, especially when I was recovering, but after a while I started to go stir crazy. I tried to write my book, then decided writing one’s memoirs at forty-eight was an exercise in extreme self-absorption. So I read other people’s books, I putter, and I take long walks in Manhattan.”

“What about the children?” Graham asked this question with the skepticism of a man who had elevated childlessness to a religion. “What’s it like being a father for the first time at your age?”

“What the hell do you mean by
your
age?”

“I mean, you’re forty-eight years old, love. The first time you try to play a set of tennis with your children you may very well drop dead of a coronary.”

“It’s marvelous,” Michael said. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

“But?” Graham wondered.

“But I’m cooped up in the apartment with the children all day, and I’m beginning to go a bit insane.”

“So what are you planning to do with the rest of your life?”

“Develop a drinking problem. More Scotch, please.”

“Absolutely,” Graham said. He made a vast show of snatching up the bottle with his long hands and dumping an inch of the whisky into Michael’s glass. Graham had a deftness about him, a shocking uncontrived grace even in the simplest gesture. Michael thought he was a little too pretty for a spy: the half-closed gray eyes that projected bored insolence, the narrow features that would have been attractive on a woman’s face. He was an artist at heart, a gifted pianist who could have made his living on the concert stage instead of the secret stage, had he chosen to do so. Michael assumed it was his father’s wartime heroics—”his bloody wonderful war,” Graham snarled once after too much Bordeaux—that drove Graham into intelligence work.

Graham said, “So when the senator asked you to do a little freelance work on the Ulster Freedom Brigade—”

“I didn’t exactly stomp my feet and resist.”

“Did Elizabeth see through your little game?”

“Elizabeth sees through everything. She’s a lawyer, remember? And a damned good one. She would have made an excellent intelligence officer, too.” Michael hesitated for a moment. “So what can you tell me about the Ulster Freedom Brigade?”

“Precious little, I’m afraid.” Graham hesitated. “Usual rules for the game, right, Michael? Any information I give you is for your background purposes only. You may not share it with any member of your former service—or any other service, for that matter.”

Michael raised his right hand and said, “Scout’s honor.”

Graham spoke for twenty minutes without interruption. The British intelligence and security organizations were not certain whether the Ulster Freedom Brigade had five members or five hundred. Hundreds of known members of Protestant paramilitary organizations had been interrogated, and none had provided a single useful lead. The sophistication of the attacks suggested the group had expertise and serious financial backing. There was also evidence to suggest that its leaders would go to extraordinary lengths to safeguard internal security. Charlie Bates, a Protestant suspected in the murder of Eamonn Dillon, had been discovered shot to death in a barn outside Hillsborough in County Armagh, and the bombers in Dublin and London had both died in the explosions—a fact that had not been made public.

“This is Northern Ireland, not West Beirut,” Graham said. “The Northern Irish aren’t suicide bombers. It’s simply not part of the fabric of the conflict.”