The Marching Season

assignment."
    "Was the woman in the Volvo Rebecca Wells?"
    "Yes."
    "Where is she now?"
    "That wasn't part of our deal, Michael."
    "Why kill me?"
    "The Director has invested a great deal of money in me, and he wanted to protect his investment. He saw you as a threat."
    "Was the source from Langley at the meeting on Mykonos?"
    "Everyone was on Mykonos."
    It was after 5 A.M. when Michael and Delaroche arrived in the village of Greenport on Long Island. They drove through the deserted streets and parked at the ferry landing. The boat lay quietly in its slip; it would not make its first trip across the Sound to Shelter Island for another hour. Michael used the public telephone next to the small clapboard shack at the terminal.
    "Where the fuck are you?" Adrian Carter said. "Everyone in town is looking for you."
    "Call me back at this number from a public phone." The ten-digit number he recited to Carter bore no resemblance to the actual number for the public phone. He had given Carter the number in a crude code the two men had used in the field a hundred years ago—backward, the first digit one more than the real number, the second digit two less, the third digit
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    three more, and so on. He did not have to repeat the number. Carter, like Michael, was cursed with a perfect memory.
    Michael hung up and smoked a cigarette while he waited for Carter to dress, get in his car, and drive to a public phone. The image of Carter pulling a coat over his pajamas made Michael smile. The telephone rang five minutes later.
    "Would you mind telling me what the hell is going on?"
    "I'll tell you when you get here."
    "Where are you?"
    "Shelter Island."
    "What the hell are you doing there? Were you involved in that shoot-out on the Key Bridge?"
    "Just get up here on the first plane, Adrian. I need you."
    Carter hesitated a moment. "I'll be there as soon as I can, but why do I know that this is going to suck."
    When Michael went back to the car Delaroche was gone. He found him a moment later, leaning against a rusting chain-link fence, staring across the Sound toward the low, dark silhouette of Shelter Island.
    "Tell me your plans," Delaroche said.
    "If you want your money and your freedom, you're going to have to sing for your supper."
    "What do you want me to do?"
    "Help me destroy the source inside Langley."
    "Do you know who he is?"
    "I do," Michael said. "And it's not a he. It's Monica Tyler."
    "I don't know enough to destroy Monica Tyler."
    "Yes, you do."
    Delaroche was still staring at the black water. "Surely we
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    could have done this somewhere but here, Michael. Why did you bring me back to this place?" But Delaroche wasn't really expecting an answer, and Michael didn't give him one. "I need to know one thing. I need to know how Astrid died."
    "Elizabeth killed her."
    "How?"
    When Michael told him, he closed his eyes. They stood there, side by side, each clinging to the fence, as the first ferrymen began to arrive for work. A few minutes later the boat began to rumble in its slip.
    "It was never personal," Delaroche said finally. "It was just business. Do you understand what I'm saying to you, Michael? It was just business."
    "You put me and my family through hell, and I'll never forgive you for it. But I understand. I understand everything now."
    42
    SHELTER ISLAND, NEW YORK
    When they arrived at the gate of Cannon Point, a security officer named Tom Moore stepped out of the guard shack. He was a former army ranger, with thick square shoulders and short-cropped blond hair.
    "Sorry I didn't call first to let you know I was coming, Tom."
    "No problem, Mr. Osbourne," Moore said. "We heard about the ambassador, sir. Obviously, we're all pulling for him. I just hope they catch the bastards who did it. Radio said they vanished without a trace."
    "It appears so. This is a friend of mine," Michael said, gesturing at Delaroche. "He'll be staying a day or two."
    "Yes, sir."
    "Come up to the house for lunch, Tom. We need to talk."
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    "I don't want anything to do with it/'Adrian Carter said. "Turn it over to Counterintelligence. Jesus, give it to the goons at the Bureau, for all I care. But just get rid of it, because it will destroy anyone who touches it."
    Carter and Michael walked along the bulkhead overlooking the Sound, head down, hands in pockets, like a search party looking for the body. The morning was windless and cold, the water gunmetal gray. Carter was wearing the same