The Marching Season

I don't need to remind you that you swore an oath of allegiance to the Society. Your first concern is upholding that oath."
    "I understand, Director."
    "Perhaps you will be presented with an opportunity to resolve the matter yourself."
    "I've never done that sort of thing, Director."
    "It's not so difficult, Picasso. I'll wait to hear from you."
    He hung up the telephone and looked at Daphne.
    "Begin calling the members of the executive council and the division chiefs. I need to speak to each of them urgently. I'm afraid we may be forced to close down shop for a while."
    Monica Tyler hung up the telephone and stared out her window at the Potomac. She walked across the room and stopped in front of a Rembrandt, a landscape she had purchased at auction in New York for a small fortune. Her eyes ran over the painting now: the clouds, the light spilling from the cottage, the horseless trap in the grass of the meadow. She took hold of the frame and pulled. The Rembrandt swung back on its hinges, revealing a small wall safe.
    Her fingers worked the tumblers automatically, eyes barely
    i
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    looking at the numbers; a few seconds later the safe was open. She began removing items: an envelope containing one hundred thousand dollars in cash, three false passports in different names from different countries, credit cards corresponding to the names.
    Then she removed one final item, a Browning automatic.
    Perhaps you will be presented with an opportunity to resolve the matter yourself.
    She changed clothes, exchanging the tailored Chanel for a pair of jeans and a sweater. She placed the items from the safe into a large black leather handbag. Then she packed a small overnight bag with a change of clothes.
    She pulled the handbag over her shoulder and reached inside, wrapping her hand around the grip of the Browning; she had been trained by the Agency to handle a gun. A member of her security detail was waiting outside in the hall.
    "Good afternoon, Director Tyler."
    "Good afternoon, Ted."
    "Back to Headquarters, Director?"
    "The helipad, actually."
    "The helipad? No one told us anything about—"
    "It's all right, Ted," she said calmly. "It's a private matter."
    The security man looked at her carefully. "Is there something wrong, Director Tyler?"
    "No, Ted, everything's going to be just fine."
    43
    SHELTER ISLAND, NEW YORK
    Michael maintained a tense vigil on the lawn of Cannon Point. He was drinking Adrian Carter's vile coffee and smoking his own vile cigarettes, pacing the frozen grass with a pair of Douglas's bird-watching binoculars around his neck. God, but it was a cold night, he thought. He looked once more at the western sky, the direction Monica would come, but there was only a spray of wet stars, scattered over the black carpet of space, and a sliver of moon, white as exposed bone.
    Michael looked at his watch—9:58 P.M. Monica's never on time, he thought. "Monica will be ten minutes late for her own funeral," Carter once cracked, while cooling his heels in Monica's dreary anteroom. Maybe she won't come, Michael thought, or maybe I just hope she won't. Maybe Adrian had been right. Maybe he should just forget about the whole thing, leave the Agency— for good, this time—and stay on Shelter Island with Elizabeth and the children. And what? Live the rest of my life looking over my
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    shoulder, waiting for Monica and her friends to send another assassin, another Delaroche?
    He checked the time once more. It was his father's old watch: German-made, big as a silver dollar, waterproof, dustproof, shock-proof, childproof, faintly luminous. Perfect for a spy. It was the only one of his father's possessions Michael had taken after he died. He even kept the lousy expansion band that left a puckered brickwork pattern on the skin of his wrist. Sometimes he would look at the watch and think of his father—in Moscow, or Rome, or Vienna, or Beirut—waiting for an agent. He wondered what his father would think of all this. He never told me what he was thinking then, Michael thought. Why should now be any different?
    He heard a thumping sound that could have been a distant helicopter, but it was only the nightclub across the water in Greenport—the house band gearing up for yet another dreadful set. Michael thought of his motley operational team. Delaroche, his enemy, his living proof of Monica's treachery, waiting to be wheeled onto the stage and wheeled off again. Tom Moore, parked in