The Marching Season

Mikhailo-vich, he would say. We are racing against the clock. He would spend afternoons drifting through the museums, studying great works. He attended art school for a time and even managed to sell a few of his works on the street.
    Then the man named Mikhail Arbatov appeared, and the killing began.
    "Arbatov was my control officer," Delaroche said. "At first I handled internal matters—dissidents, potential defectors, that sort of thing. Then I took on a different kind of mission."
    Michael ticked off a series of assassinations that he knew Delaroche had carried out: the Spanish minister in Madrid, the French police official in Paris, the BMW executive in Frankfurt, the PLO official in Tunis, the Israeli businessman in London.
    "The KGB wanted to take advantage of the terrorist and nationalist movements inside the borders of the NATO alliance and its allies," Delaroche said. "The IRA, the Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades of Italy, the Basques in Spain, Direct Action in France, and so on. I killed on both sides of the divide, simply in
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    order to create disorder. There were many more killings than the ones you've named, of course."
    "And when the Soviet Union collapsed?"
    "Arbatov and I were set adrift."
    "So you went into private practice?"
    Delaroche nodded, rubbing his ankle.
    "Arbatov had excellent contacts and was a skilled negotiator. He served as my agent, entertaining offers, negotiating fees—that sort of thing. We split the proceeds of my work."
    "And then TransAtlantic came along."
    "It was the biggest single payday of my life, one million dollars. But I did not shoot down that jetliner. It was that Palestinian psychopath Hassan Mahmoud who shot down the plane."
    "You just disposed of Mahmoud."
    "That's right."
    "And the body was left behind so we would conclude that the Sword of Gaza had carried out the attack."
    "Yes."
    "And then you were hired by the men who really shot down the jetliner to eliminate the other people involved in the operation, like Colin Yardley in London and Eric Stoltenberg in Cairo."
    "And then you."
    "Who hired you?" Michael said. "Who hired you to kill me?"
    "They call themselves the Society for International Development and Cooperation," Delaroche began. "They're a bunch of intelligence officers, businessmen, arms merchants, and criminals who try to influence world events in order to make money and protect their own interests."
    "I don't believe such an organization really exists."
    "They shot down the jetliner so that one of their mem-
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    bers, an American defense contractor named Mitchell Elliott, could convince President Beckwith to build an antimissile defense system."
    Michael had suspected that Elliott was involved in this tragedy; indeed, he had put his suspicions in writing in his report to the Agency. Still, to hear Delaroche confirm his suspicions made him feel nauseated. Sweat began running over his ribs.
    "They knew you were getting too close to the truth," Delaroche said. "They decided it would be best if you were dead, so they hired me to kill you."
    "How did they know about my suspicions?"
    "They have a source inside Langley."
    "What happened after Shelter Island?" Michael asked.
    "I went to work exclusively for the Society."
    "Does the Society have a leader?"
    "He's called the Director. He goes by no other name. He's an Englishman. He has a young girl named Daphne. That's all I know about him."
    "You were the one who killed Ahmed Hussein in Cairo."
    Delaroche turned suddenly and glared at Michael.
    "The Society carried out the assassination at the behest of the Mossad. How did you know it was me?"
    "Hussein was under Egyptian surveillance. I saw a videotape of the killing and noticed the wound on the assassin's right hand. That's when I knew you were alive and working again. That's when we issued the Interpol alert."
    "We knew about the alert immediately," Delaroche said, staring at the back of his right hand. "The Director has excellent contacts within the Western intelligence and security services, but he said the information on the Interpol alert came from his source at Langley."
    "Why did the Society get involved in Northern Ireland?"
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    "Because it thought the peace agreement in Northern Ireland was bad for business. There was a meeting of the Society's executive council last month in Mykonos. The Society decided at that meeting to kill your father-in-law and you, and I was given the