The Marching Season

m not sure.
    "Who are you, Jean-Paul?"
    36
    WASHINGTON
    The following morning Michael and Elizabeth flew from New York to Washington, along with the children and Maggie. They separated at National Airport. Michael took a chauffeured government sedan to the White House to brief National Security Adviser William Bristol on Northern Ireland; Elizabeth, Maggie, and the children crowded into a car-service Lincoln for the ride into Georgetown.
    Elizabeth had not been back to the large redbrick Federal on N Street in more than a year. She loved the old house, but climbing the curved brick steps she was suddenly overwhelmed with bad memories. She thought of the long struggle with her own body to have children. She thought of the afternoon Astrid Vogel had come here to take her hostage so the assassin called October could murder her husband.
    "Are you all right, Elizabeth?" Maggie asked.
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    Elizabeth wondered how long she had been standing there, key in hand, unable to unlock the door.
    "Yes, I'm fine, Maggie. I was just thinking about something."
    The alarm chirped as she pushed back the front door. She punched in the disarm code, and it fell silent. Michael had turned the place into a fortress, but she would never feel completely safe here.
    She helped Maggie get the children settled, then carried her suitcase upstairs to the bedroom. She was unzipping the bag when the doorbell rang. She walked downstairs and peered through the peephole. Outside was a tall brown-haired man in a blue suit and tan raincoat.
    "Can I help you?" she said, without opening the door.
    "My name is Brad Heyworth, Mrs. Osbourne. I'm the Diplomatic Security Service agent assigned to watch your house."
    Elizabeth opened the door. "DSS? But my father doesn't arrive from London for another six hours."
    "Actually, we've been watching the house for a couple of days now, Mrs. Osbourne."
    "Why?"
    "After the incident in Britain, we decided it was probably best to err on the side of caution."
    "Are you alone?"
    "For now, but when the ambassador arrives we'll add a second man to the detail."
    "That's reassuring," she said. "Would you like to come inside?"
    "No, thank you, Mrs. Osbourne, I need to stay out here."
    "Can I get you anything?"
    "I'm fine," he said. "I just wanted to let you know that we're around."
    "Thank you, Agent Heyworth."
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    Elizabeth closed the door and watched as the DSS man walked down the front steps and got back in his car. She was glad he was there. She went upstairs and sat down at the desk in Michael's old study. She made a series of brief telephone calls: to Ridgewell's catering, to the valet service, to her office in New York to check messages. Then she spent another hour returning calls.
    Maria, the cleaning lady, arrived at noon. Elizabeth dressed in a nylon track suit and went outside. She bounced down the front steps, waved to Brad Heyworth, and jogged down the brick sidewalk of N Street.
    At the Embassy Row hotel, Delaroche had hung the DO not disturb sign outside the room and double-locked the door. For the past hour he had been listening to Elizabeth Osbourne: talking on the telephone, talking to her nanny and her children, talking to the DSS agent guarding the house. Delaroche now knew exactly when Douglas Cannon would arrive from London and when he would leave for the White House the next morning to attend the Northern Ireland conference. He also knew that the DSS agent parked in front of the house was named Brad Heyworth and that a second agent would join the detail after the ambassador's arrival.
    He heard the arrival of a cleaning woman called Maria who spoke with a heavy Spanish accent: South American, Delaroche guessed—Peru or perhaps Bolivia. He heard Elizabeth Osbourne announce that she was going for a run and would be back in an hour. He jumped as she slammed the front door on her way out.
    Five minutes later he was startled by a howling noise that sounded like the roar of a jet engine. It was so loud Delaroche had to rip the headphones from his ears. For a moment he feared
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    some calamity had befallen the Osbournes' house. Then he realized it was only Maria, running her vacuum near the window where Delaroche had planted his microphone.
    Douglas Cannon's dinner party started out as an intimate gathering for eight, but in the aftermath of the Hartley Hall affair it had metamorphosed into a catered bash for fifty, with rented tables and chairs and a squad of