The Marching Season

Douglas moved to the microphones.
    "There will be many important issues in London, issues of trade and defense, but none more important now than helping the government of Prime Minister Blair to bring a lasting peace to Northern Ireland."
    Douglas paused for a moment, looking past the audience directly into the television cameras.
    "I have one thing to say to the men of violence, to those who wish to undo the Good Friday accords. The days of the gun and the bomb and the balaclava are over. The people of Northern Ireland have spoken. Your day is done." He paused a moment. "Mr. President, I look forward to serving you in London."
    13
    PORTADOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND
    "YOU HEAR THE NEWS THIS AFTERNOON?" KYLE BLAKE ASKED, AS HE sat down in his usual booth at McConville's pub.
    "I did indeed," Gavin Spencer said. "The man has a big mouth."
    "Can we get to him?" Blake said, to no one in particular.
    "If we can get to Eamonn Dillon, we can get to an American ambassador," Gavin Spencer said. "But does it serve our purposes?"
    "The Americans haven't paid a price for their support of the Good Friday accords," Blake said. "If we're able to assassinate the American ambassador, everyone in the States will know who we are and what we're about. Remember, we're not trying to win a battlefield victory, we're trying to win publicity for our cause. If we kill Douglas Cannon, the entire American media will be forced to tell the story of Ulster from the Protestant perspective.
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    It's like a reflex action. That's what they do. It worked for the IRA, and it worked for the PLO. But can it really be done?"
    "We can do it any number of ways," Spencer said. "We need just one thing: We need to know when and where. We need intelligence on his movements, his whereabouts. We have to choose our opportunity carefully or it won't work."
    Blake and Spencer looked at Rebecca Wells.
    Blake said, "Can you get us the kind of information we'll need?"
    "Without question," Rebecca said. "I'll need to go to London. I'll need a flat, some money, and most of all plenty of time. Information like this doesn't come overnight."
    Blake took a long pull from his Guinness while he thought it all through. After a moment he looked up at Rebecca. "I want you to set up shop in London as soon as possible. I'll get you the money in the morning."
    He turned to Gavin.
    "Start preparing your team. They're not to be told the target until it's absolutely necessary. And tread softly, both of you. Tread very softly."
    FEBRUARY
    14
    NEW YORK CITY
    "How was London?" Adrian Carter asked.
    They had entered Central Park at Ninetieth Street and Fifth Avenue and were walking the cinder and dirt footpath on the levee surrounding the reservoir. Freezing wind stirred the leafless tree limbs above their heads. Near the banks of the reservoir the water had frozen, but a short distance from shore, in a patch of mercury-colored water, a flotilla of ducks bobbed like tiny vessels at anchor.
    "How did you know I was in London?" Michael asked.
    "Because British Intelligence sent me a polite note asking if your visit was business or pleasure. I told them you were retired, so it was surely pleasure. Was I right?"
    "Depends on your definition of pleasure," Michael said, and Carter laughed mildly.
    Adrian Carter was the chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism
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    Center. He had served as Michael's control officer when Michael was working in the field. Even now they moved as though they were meeting behind enemy lines. Carter walked like a man wrestling with an eternally guilty conscience, shoulders hunched, hands thrust deep into his pockets. His large droopy eyes gave him the appearance of perpetual fatigue, yet they flickered constantly around the trees and the reservoir and across the faces of the joggers foolish enough to brave the biting cold. He wore an ugly woolen ski hat that robbed him of any physical authority. His pudgy down jacket created a floating effect, so he seemed to be blowing along the footpath with the wind. Strangers tended to underestimate Carter, which he had used to his advantage throughout his career, both in the field and in the bureaucratic trenches at Headquarters. He was a brilliant linguist— he dreamed in a half-dozen languages—and he had lost count of the countries where he had operated.
    "So what the hell were you doing in London?" Carter asked.
    Michael told him.
    Carter said, "Pick up anything interesting?"
    Michael told Carter what he had