The Marching Season

authority, but you have the ability."
    Michael remained silent.
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    Delaroche said, "You don't want to die without knowing the truth, do you, Michael?"
    "Fuck you!"
    "Do we have a deal?"
    "How do you know I won't have you arrested the minute you pull me up?"
    "Because unfortunately, you are an honorable man, which makes you strangely ill-suited to a business like this." Delaroche shook Michael and said, "Do we have a deal?"
    "We have a deal, you fucking bastard."
    "All right then. Drop the gun into the river and take my hand before you get us both killed."
    40
    WASHINGTON * DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
    "THE BULLET BROKE SEVERAL OF AMBASSADOR CANNON'S RIBS AND
    collapsed his left lung," said the doctor at George Washington University Hospital, an absurdly young-looking surgeon named Carlisle. "But unless he suffers some serious complications, I think he's going to be all right."
    "Can I see him?" Elizabeth said.
    Carlisle shook his head. "He's in recovery now, and frankly he doesn't look great. Why don't you stay here and try to make yourself comfortable. We'll let you see him as soon as he's awake."
    The doctor went out. Elizabeth tried to sit down, but after a few minutes she was once again pacing the small private waiting room. Two Metropolitan Police officers stood guard outside the door. She wore a set of light-blue hospital scrubs, because her dress had been stained with the blood of her father and the DSS agent. Maggie and the children were in a separate room. Maggie
    The Marching Season 367
    was remarkable, Elizabeth thought. She had been threatened by an assassin and bound with packing tape, but she refused to let the nurses look after Liza and Jake. Now, Elizabeth needed just one thing. She needed to hear her husband's voice.
    It had been more than an hour since Elizabeth's nightmarish escape from N Street. The police had told her what they knew. When the first units arrived, the terrorists had fled, and Michael was alive. Then he disappeared across the back garden, and no one had seen him since. Two minutes later there was gunfire on the Georgetown side of Key Bridge, and a car exploded. The car, a light-gray Saab, had been stolen a moment earlier by a man with a silenced handgun. There were also reports of two men fighting on the bridge. One man dangling over the water. . . . Elizabeth closed her eyes and shivered. She thought, Michael, if you're alive, please tell me.
    It was eleven o'clock. She switched on the television and flipped through the channels. The story was everywhere—the local stations and all the cable news channels. No one had any news about Michael. She dug a cigarette from her purse and lit it, smoking while she paced.
    A nurse came by and stuck her head in the door.
    "I'm sorry, ma'am, but there's no smoking in here."
    Elizabeth looked for a place to put the cigarette.
    "Let me take that, Mrs. Osbourne," the nurse said gently. "Is there anything I can get you?"
    Elizabeth shook her head.
    As the nurse went out, her cellular phone rang.
    She pulled the phone from her bag and switched it on.
    "Hello."
    "It's me, Elizabeth. Don't say a word, just listen."
    "Michael," she whispered.
    "I'm fine," he said. "I haven't been hurt."
    368 Daniel Silva
    "Thank God," she said.
    "How's Douglas?"
    "He's out of surgery. The doctor thinks he's going to be all right."
    "Where are the children?"
    "They're here at the hospital," Elizabeth said. "When am I going to see you?"
    "Maybe tomorrow. I have something I need to do first. I love you, Elizabeth."
    "Michael, where are you?" she asked, but the line had already gone dead.
    Rebecca Wells left the Volvo in the long-term lot at Dulles Airport and took a shuttle bus to the terminal. She dropped the keys into a trash can and went into a rest room. She entered a stall and changed clothes, trading her two-piece suit for faded jeans, a sweater, and suede cowboy boots. Finally, she pinned her hair against her head and put on a blond wig. She looked at herself in the mirror; the transformation had taken less than five minutes. She was now Sally Burke of Los Angeles, with a passport and a California driver's license to prove it.
    She walked through the terminal to the Air Mexico counter and checked in for the late flight to Mexico City. The next seventy-two hours were going to be difficult. From Mexico, she would travel through Central and South America, changing passports and identities each day. Then she would board a plane in Buenos Aires