The Marching Season

South.
    It started to snow as he headed uptown on Fifth Avenue, along the cobblestone sidewalk bordering the park. He was dreading the conversation he was about to have with Elizabeth; she would be furious, and rightly so. He had made her a promise after October and Astrid Vogel had tried to kill them—that he would leave the Agency and never return—and now he was going to break that promise.
    He sat down on a bench and looked up at the lights burning
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    in the windows of their apartment. He thought of the day he and Elizabeth had first met, a sweltering afternoon on the Chesapeake Bay aboard the sailboat of a mutual friend, six months after the murder of Sarah Randolph. The Agency had determined that Michael's cover was hopelessly blown; he had been pulled from the field in London and given a tedious desk job at Langley. He was miserable in his work and still devastated by Sarah's death. He never even looked at other women. Then he was introduced to Elizabeth Cannon—the beautiful, accomplished daughter of the famous senior senator from New York—and for the first time since that night on the Chelsea Embankment, Michael actually felt the shadow of Sarah Randolph receding.
    They made love to each other that night, and afterward Michael lied to her about what he did for a living. In fact, he lied to her about his work for months. It was only when they discussed marriage for the first time that he was forced to tell her the truth: that he worked for the CIA running penetration agents against terrorist groups, and that a woman he had loved desperately had been murdered before his eyes. Elizabeth slapped his face and told him she never wanted to see him again. Michael thought he had lost her forever.
    Their relationship never quite recovered from those first lies. Elizabeth equated Michael's work with other women because of Sarah. Each time he went away, she reacted as if he had betrayed her. When he returned home from the field she would unconsciously search his body for the marks of other lovers. The day he left the Agency had been the happiest day of her life. Now it was all going to start again.
    Michael crossed the street and stepped beneath the awning over the doorway to his building, slipped past the doorman, and took the elevator to a private foyer on the fourteenth floor.
    130 Daniel Silva
    He found Elizabeth where he had left her two hours earlier, sprawled on the couch beneath a large window overlooking the park, surrounded by piles of manila folders. The ashtray on the floor was filled with half-smoked cigarettes. She was defending a Staten Island tugboat company that was being prosecuted by the federal government for allegedly causing an oil spill off New Jersey. The case was going to trial in two weeks—her first trial since returning to the firm. She was working too many hours, drinking too much coffee, and smoking too much. Michael kissed her on the forehead and removed the smoldering cigarette from her fingertips. Elizabeth glanced at him over her reading glasses, then returned her gaze to the yellow legal pad where she was making notes in her looping, sprawling hand. Absently, she reached out for her pack of cigarettes and lit another.
    "You're smoking too much," Michael said.
    "I'll quit when you do," she said, without looking up from her work. "How was dinner?"
    "Dinner was fine."
    "What did they want?"
    "They want me to come back. They have a job for me."
    "What did you tell them?"
    "That I wanted to talk to you first."
    "That sounds to me like you want to take it."
    She dropped her legal pad on the floor and removed her reading glasses. She was exhausted and tense, a lethal combination. Michael, looking into her eyes, suddenly lost the will to continue, but Elizabeth pressed him.
    "What's the job?"
    "They want me to head a special task force on Northern Ireland."
    "Why you?"
    "I've worked in Northern Ireland, and I've worked at Head-
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    quarters. Monica and Adrian think that's the perfect combination for the job."
    "Monica tried to have you thrown out of the Agency a year ago, and your great friend Adrian did precious little to stop her. Why the sudden turnaround?"
    "She says all is forgiven."
    "And you obviously want to accept their offer. Otherwise you would have turned them down on the spot."
    "Yes, I want to take it."
    "Jesus Christ!" She crushed out her cigarette and lit another. "Why, Michael? I thought you were done with the Agency. I