The Marching Season

they know and are content just to sit in each other's presence. Vivaldi played softly on Graham's elaborate German sound system. Graham closed his gray eyes and savored his cigarette and whisky.
    Graham Seymour worked for the counterterrorism division of MI5. Like Michael, he had been a child prodigy. His father had worked closely with John Masterman in the Double Cross operation of MI5 during the war, capturing German spies and playing them back against their masters at the Abwehr in Berlin. He had stayed on with MI5 after the war and worked against the Russians. Harold Seymour was a legend, and his son was forever bumping into his memory at Headquarters and running across his exploits in old case files. Michael understood the pressure this
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    placed on Graham, because he had experienced the same thing in the Agency. The two men had developed a friendship when Michael was based in London. They had shared information from time to time and watched each other's back. Still, friendships have well-defined limits in the intelligence business, and Michael maintained a healthy professional mistrust of Graham Seymour. He knew Graham would stab him in the back if MI5 ordered him to do so.
    "Is it all right for you to be seen with a leper like me?" Michael asked.
    "Dinner with an old friend, darling. No harm in that. Besides, I plan to feed them some good gossip about the inner workings of Langley."
    "I haven't set foot in Langley in over a year."
    "No one ever really retires from this business. The Department hounded my father till the day he died. Every time something special came up they sent a couple of nice men round to sit at the feet of the great Harold."
    Michael raised his glass and said, "To the great Harold."
    "Here, here." Graham drank some of the whisky. "So how is retirement anyway?"
    "It sucks."
    "Really?"
    "Yes, really," Michael said. "It was all right for a while, especially when I was recovering, but after a while I started to go stir crazy. I tried to write my book, then decided writing one's memoirs at forty-eight was an exercise in extreme self-absorption. So I read other people's books, I putter, and I take long walks in Manhattan."
    "What about the children?" Graham asked this question with the skepticism of a man who had elevated childlessness to a religion. "What's it like being a father for the first time at your age?"
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    "What the hell do you mean by your age?"
    "I mean, you're forty-eight years old, love. The first time you try to play a set of tennis with your children you may very well drop dead of a coronary."
    "It's marvelous," Michael said. "It's the best thing I've ever done."
    "But?" Graham wondered.
    "But I'm cooped up in the apartment with the children all day, and I'm beginning to go a bit insane."
    "So what are you planning to do with the rest of your life?"
    "Develop a drinking problem. More Scotch, please."
    "Absolutely," Graham said. He made a vast show of snatching up the bottle with his long hands and dumping an inch of the whisky into Michael's glass. Graham had a deftness about him, a shocking uncontrived grace even in the simplest gesture. Michael thought he was a little too pretty for a spy: the half-closed gray eyes that projected bored insolence, the narrow features that would have been attractive on a woman's face. He was an artist at heart, a gifted pianist who could have made his living on the concert stage instead of the secret stage, had he chosen to do so. Michael assumed it was his father's wartime heroics—"his bloody wonderful war," Graham snarled once after too much Bordeaux—that drove Graham into intelligence work.
    Graham said, "So when the senator asked you to do a little freelance work on the Ulster Freedom Brigade—"
    "I didn't exactly stomp my feet and resist."
    "Did Elizabeth see through your little game?"
    "Elizabeth sees through everything. She's a lawyer, remember? And a damned good one. She would have made an excellent intelligence officer, too." Michael hesitated for a moment. "So what can you tell me about the Ulster Freedom Brigade?"
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    "Precious little, I'm afraid." Graham hesitated. "Usual rules for the game, right, Michael? Any information I give you is for your background purposes only. You may not share it with any member of your former service—or any other service, for that matter."
    Michael raised his right hand and said, "Scout's honor."
    Graham spoke for twenty minutes without