The Marching Season (9 page)

CHAPTER 11

BELFAST

The Ulster Unionist Party is headquartered in a four-story building at No. 3 Glengall Street, near the Europa Hotel and the Grand Opera House. Because of its location—on the western edge of the city center near the Falls Road—the UUP headquarters was a frequent target of IRA attacks throughout the Troubles. But the IRA was abiding by the cease-fire for now, and so the man in the silver Vauxhall sedan felt little apprehension as he headed toward Glengall Street through the early morning rain. Ian Morris was one of four vice presidents of the Ulster Unionist Council, the party’s central committee. He had Ulster Loyalism in his blood. His great-grandfather had earned his fortune in linen during the industrial boom in Belfast in the nineteenth century and built a large estate in the Forthriver Valley overlooking the slums of West Belfast. In 1912, when the original Ulster Volunteer Force formed up to fight Irish Home Rule, Morris’s ancestor allowed guns and supplies to be hidden in the stables and wooded gardens of the estate.

Morris had no financial concerns as a young man—his great-grandfather’s fortune provided him with a comfortable income—and he had planned a career in academia after graduating from Cambridge. But the Troubles got its hooks into him, the way it had so many men of his generation on both sides of Ulster’s religious divide, and he turned to violence instead. He joined the Ulster Volunteer Force and spent five years in the Maze prison for bombing a Catholic pub on the Broadway. In prison he had decided to turn away from the gun and the bomb and campaign for peace.

Now, there was little about his demeanor to suggest that Ian Morris had ever been a part of Northern Ireland’s terrorist underworld. His home in the Castlereagh section of East Belfast was a sanctuary of books. He spoke Latin, Greek, and Irish—unusual for a Protestant, since most considered Irish the language of Catholics. As he drove along the Castlereagh Road through the steady rain, Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor, performed by Alfred Brendel, played softly from the Vauxhall’s sound system.

He turned into May Street and passed Belfast City Hall at Donegall Square.

At Brunswick Street a van in front of him appeared to stall.

Morris gave a short, polite beep of his horn, but the van remained stationary. He had a staff meeting at nine and he was running late. He pressed the horn a second time, but the van still did not move.

Morris shut off the Mozart. Ahead of him he saw the offside door open and a leather-jacketed man emerge. Morris let down his window, but the man in the leather jacket stepped directly in front of the Vauxhall and withdrew a large-caliber pistol.

Shortly before noon the newsroom of the
Belfast Telegraph
was in bedlam. The staff of Northern Ireland’s most important newspaper was putting together extensive coverage of the assassination of Ian Morris: a main story, a sidebar on Morris’s career with the Ulster Unionist Party and the UVF, and an analysis of the state of the peace process. All that was missing was a claim of responsibility.

At 12:05 P.M. a telephone on the news desk rattled. A junior news editor called Clarke answered it.
“Telegraph
newsroom,” Clarke shouted over the din.

“Pay attention, because I’m only going to say this once,” the caller said. Male, calm, authoritative, Clarke noted. “This is a representative of the Ulster Freedom Brigade. A Brigade officer, under orders from the Brigade military council, carried out the assassination of Ian Morris earlier today. The Ulster Unionists have betrayed the Protestant people of Northern Ireland by supporting the Good Friday accords. The Ulster Freedom Brigade will continue its campaign until the Good Friday agreement is nullified.” The caller paused, then said, “Did you get that?”

“Got it.”

“Good,” the voice said, and the line went dead.

Clarke stood at his desk and shouted, “We have a claim for Ian Morris!”

“Who is it?” came a shout from somewhere in the newsroom.

“Ulster Freedom Brigade,” Clarke said. “My God, it’s Prods killing Prods.”

CHAPTER 12

SHELTER ISLAND, NEW YORK

Elizabeth met Michael outside the British Airways terminal at Kennedy Airport. His body ached from travel—three very long flights in three days—and for the first time in many weeks he could feel the pulling of the scar tissue in his chest. His mouth was sour from too many cigarettes and too much airline coffee. When Elizabeth flung her arms about his body, he gave her only a brief kiss below her ear. He was really too tired to drive, but he feared inactivity more. He placed his bag into the rear storage compartment, next to a half-dozen packages of diapers and a case of Similac, and climbed behind the wheel.

“You look like you got some sun, Michael,” Elizabeth said, as Michael entered the Van Wyck Expressway. Michael switched on the radio, turning the dial from Elizabeth’s adult contemporary rock station to WCBS, so he could listen to the traffic updates. “Must have been quite a warm spell in London while you were there.”

“I wasn’t in London the entire time.”

“Oh, really,” she said. “Where the hell were you?”

“I stopped in Cairo for a day.”

“You
stopped
in Cairo for a day? What the hell does Cairo have to do with Northern Ireland?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I needed to see an old friend about something.”

“What?”

Michael hesitated.

“You don’t work for them anymore, so you can’t hide behind their regulations,” she said icily. “I’d like to know why you went to Cairo.”

“Can we talk about this later?” he said. This was code for I-don’t-want-to-quarrel-in-front-of-the-nanny, who was in the backseat with the children.

“You have that look, Michael. That look you used to have when you came home from the field and couldn’t tell me where you’d been or what you’d been doing.”

“I’m going to tell you everything. Just not now.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re back, darling,” Elizabeth said, looking away again. “You look wonderful, by the way. You always did look nice with a tan.”

Douglas was already asleep when they reached the island. Elizabeth and the nanny put the children down. Michael went to their bedroom and unpacked. His hair smelled of Cairo—diesel, dust, and woodsmoke—so he showered. When he came back into the bedroom, Elizabeth was seated at her dressing table, pulling earrings from her ears and rings from her fingers. He remembered a time when she would sit at her dressing table for an hour, taking pleasure in her appearance and her ability to make it more perfect. Now she worked quickly and without joy, like an assembly-line worker. Since his retirement Michael did nothing quickly. Haste in others mystified him.

“Why did you go to Cairo?” Elizabeth said, violently brushing her hair.

“Because a leader of Hamas was assassinated there a couple of days ago.”

“Ahmed Hussein,” she said. “I read about it in the
Times.”

“There was something about the way the job was carried out that intrigued me, so I went and knocked on a few old doors.”

He told her of his meeting with Yousef Hafez. He told her of the Mossad team and the Egyptian countersurveillance. Then he told her about the videotape.

“I want to see it,” she said.

“A man gets shot to death, Elizabeth; it’s not make-believe.”

“I’ve seen people shot before.”

He inserted the tape into the VCR. A street scene appeared on the screen, robed men streaming from a mosque. A few seconds later a motorcycle roared into the frame at high speed. The motorcyclist stopped suddenly at the steps of the mosque, and his arm swung up. He fired several times, the silenced handgun emitting no discernible sound. The shots struck a small bearded man, turning his white robe crimson with blood. The man on the motorcycle fired twice more, shooting a second man in the chest and a third through the throat. The engine roared again, and the gunman vanished into traffic. Michael stopped the tape.

“Jesus Christ,” Elizabeth said softly.

“I think it may be him,” Michael said. “I think it’s October.”

“How can you tell?”

“I’ve seen him move. I’ve seen him handle a gun. The way his arm swings before he fires—it’s very distinctive.”

“He’s wearing a helmet, so you can’t see his face. The tape proves nothing.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

Michael rewound the tape. Ahmed Hussein was alive again. The motorcycle swept into the frame and skidded to a stop. The assassin’s arm swung up. Michael froze the image of the killer leveling his gun at his first victim, arm straight out from his side. Then he walked to the closet, opened the doors, and took down a small box from the top shelf. He opened the box and pulled out a gun.

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s his gun,” Michael said. “The one he dropped in the water off the dock that night. It’s a Beretta nine-millimeter competition pistol. I’m not sure, but I think it’s the same kind of gun used by the killer in Cairo.”

“That’s still hardly conclusive evidence,” Elizabeth said.

“He dropped the gun because I shot him in the hand.” Michael tapped the television screen. “His right hand, the hand we can see holding the gun.”

“What’s your point, Michael?”

“I shot him with a high-powered Browning automatic. The round probably tore through his hand, broke bones, left an ugly scar. If I find a scar on that hand, I’ll be certain it’s him.”

“It’s awfully far away to see something as small as a scar.”

“The Agency has computers capable of bringing out the smallest detail in videotape images. I want to run this tape through those computers and see if there’s anything there.”

Elizabeth stood up and switched off the television. “So what if that’s him. So what if he’s still alive and killing people again. What difference does it make to us?”

“I just want to know.”

“He can’t hurt us. You and your friends at the Agency turned this place into a fortress. And don’t pretend that driver you hired for me in New York isn’t CIA.”

“He’s not from the Agency,” Michael said. “He used to do some work for us from time to time.”

“Does he carry a gun?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Answer me. Does he carry a gun?”

“Yes. He carries a gun because I asked him to carry a gun.”

“Jesus Christ,” Elizabeth said, and turned off the light.

She climbed into bed and pulled the comforter beneath her chin. Michael lay next to her.

“It’s over, Michael. It’s done.”

“It’s not over as long as I know he’s alive.”

“I almost lost you. I held you in my arms and prayed for you not to die after he shot you. I watched your blood running out of you. I don’t want to go through that again.”

Michael kissed her mouth, but her lips did not respond. He rolled over and closed his eyes. A match flared, and a moment later he smelled the smoke of Elizabeth’s cigarette.

“It’s her, isn’t it. It’s Sarah Randolph. It’s been more than ten years, and you’re still obsessed with her.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re obsessed with avenging her death.”

“This has nothing to do with Sarah. It has to do with us. He tried to kill us too.”

“You’re a lousy liar, Michael.” She crushed out her cigarette in an ashtray on the bedside table and exhaled the last smoke sharply between her lips. “How you ever managed to function as a spy is beyond me.”

The bedroom windows faced north and west, over Shelter Island Sound and Dering Harbor, so it was nearly eight o’clock the following morning when they woke with the weak winter dawn.

The children already were awake, and one of them—Michael was not certain which one—was crying. Elizabeth sat up, tore away her bedding, and swung her feet to the floor. She had slept poorly, troubled by nightmares, and her eyes were puffy and dark. She walked out of the room without speaking and went downstairs.

He lay in bed for several minutes, listening to her coo at the children. After a moment he rose and went into the small sitting room off the bedroom. Douglas had left a vacuum thermos of coffee on the table with a folded copy of
The New York Times.
It was a weekend tradition at Cannon Point; Douglas always rose first and made coffee for everyone else in the house.

Michael poured coffee and opened the newspaper. The West Bank had exploded in violence over the assassination of Ahmed Hussein. The Israeli government was threatening to send troops into Palestinian-controlled areas. The peace process was in critical condition. In Northern Ireland, a Protestant leader had been assassinated in Belfast. The Ulster Freedom Brigade had claimed responsibility.

A half hour later Michael found himself trudging along a frozen path through the Mashomack nature preserve. Douglas led the way along a narrow footpath threaded through bare trees. He was a tall broad man, poorly designed for hiking, yet he nimbly negotiated the slippery trail.

The previous night’s rain had moved out to sea. A white sun shone in a sky streaked with cirrus clouds. It was intensely cold, and after a few minutes Michael felt as though his lungs were filled with shattered glass. Winter had drained all color from the landscape. They came upon half a dozen white-tailed deer, standing on their hind legs, stripping bark from the trees.

“Isn’t that fantastic,” Douglas said. He grew annoyed when Michael didn’t concur. Michael found little beauty in nature; a secluded piazza in Venice gave him more pleasure than a Long Island bay. Woods and water bored him. People intrigued him because he mistrusted them, and he could outwit them if they threatened him.

Michael told his father-in-law about the Ulster Freedom Brigade as they walked the stony shore of Smith Cove. Douglas Cannon allowed Michael to speak uninterrupted for fifteen minutes; then he peppered him with questions for ten more.

“I want a straight answer from you, Michael. Will I be in any physical danger if I accept this job?”

“The Ulster Freedom Brigade has shown its intentions very clearly. They want to punish every party to the peace accords. One major party remains—the Americans. Neither side, Republican or Loyalist, has ever intentionally killed an American, but the rules have changed.”

“Twenty years in Washington, and never once did I get a straight answer from a goddamned spook.”

Even Michael had to laugh. “It’s not an exact science. Intelligence estimates involve a good deal of conjecture and guesswork, based on available evidence.”

“Sometimes I think pulling petals from a daisy would be just as effective.”

Douglas stopped walking and turned to face the water. His face had turned crimson with the cold and wind. Smith Cove was the color of nickel. A half-empty ferry fought the strong current racing through the narrow channel between the southern tip of Shelter Island and North Haven Peninsula.

“Damn me for saying this, but I
do
want one more chance in the spotlight,” Douglas said. “I could help make history, and that’s pretty seductive for an old professor like me. Even if it means working for a stupid sonofabitch like Jim Beckwith.”

“Elizabeth is going to be furious.”

“I’ll deal with Elizabeth.”

“Yeah, but I have to live with her.”

“She’s just like her mother, Michael. You never knew Eileen, but if you had, you’d understand where Elizabeth gets her stubbornness and her strength. If it hadn’t been for Eileen, I would never have had the courage to leave Columbia and run for Congress.”

Douglas kicked at the stones with the toe of his Wellington boot.

“You have a phone?”

Michael reached inside his coat pocket and handed Douglas a cellular telephone. Douglas dialed the President’s office directly and left a message with Beckwith’s personal secretary. They retraced their course, leaving the sunlight of Smith Cove for the cold shadows of the woods. Five minutes later the telephone chirped. Douglas, who was forever grappling with the complexities of modern communications, thrust the phone at Michael and said, “Answer this damn thing, will you?”

Michael punched a button on the keypad and said, “Osbourne.”

“Good morning, Michael,” said President James Beckwith. “I can’t tell you how good it was to see you again last weekend. I’m pleased that you’ve made such a remarkable recovery. I just wish I could get you back at Langley where you belong.”

Michael resisted the impulse to warn the President that they were speaking on an insecure cell phone.

“Has your father-in-law reached a decision?”

“He has, Mr. President.”

“Good news, I hope.”

“I’ll let him tell you.”

Michael handed the phone to Douglas and walked up the path a short distance, so Douglas could speak to the President alone.

Douglas flew to Washington that evening. He had told Elizabeth of his decision after returning from Mashomack Preserve. She absorbed the news with stoic restraint and gave him a cool congratulatory kiss on the cheek, reserving her anger for Michael, because he had failed to talk Douglas out of accepting the assignment. Michael accompanied Douglas to Washington for the ceremony. The two men stayed in Michael and Elizabeth’s old redbrick Federal on N Street and went to the White House the following morning.

Douglas and Beckwith met in the Oval Office, drinking tea in wing chairs before a fire. Michael had wanted to wait outside, but the President insisted he join them. He sat down on one of the couches, a little apart from the others, and studied his hands while they talked. For five minutes Douglas made the obligatory noises about loyalty and the honor of serving one’s country. The President talked about the importance of the U.S.-British relationship and about the situation in Northern Ireland.

At ten-thirty the two men stepped through the French doors into the Rose Garden. It was a warm winter’s day in Washington, the sun bright, the air soft, and the two men strode to the podium side by side wearing suit jackets but no overcoats.

“Today, I am proud to nominate former senator Douglas Cannon of New York to be our next ambassador to the Court of St. James’s in London,” Beckwith said matter-of-factly. “Douglas Cannon served the great state of New York, and the American people, brilliantly in both the House and the Senate. And I know firsthand he possesses the intellect, the strength, and the grace to represent this nation’s interests in an important foreign capital such as London.”