The Marching Season

drove north along the George Washington Memorial Parkway. The river shimmered below him. Bare tree limbs moved in the wind. He had the sensation of driving through a flickering tunnel of light. In the old days, before he had sold his Jaguar, driving back and forth from their home in Georgetown to Headquarters was the favorite part of his day. It wasn't quite the same in a rented Ford Taurus.
    He turned into the main entrance of the CIA, stopped at the bulletproof guard shack, and gave the Special Protective Services
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    officer his name; since he no longer had an Agency identification card he handed over his New York driver's license. The officer checked the name against a list. He provided a pink pass for the dashboard—the choice of color always mystified Michael—and directions to the visitors' lot.
    Walking through the white marble entrance hall, Michael had the sensation of floating through a room from childhood. Everything seemed a little smaller and a little dirtier than he remembered. He walked over the Agency seal set in the floor. He glanced at the statue of Bill Donovan—the founder of the CIA's predecessor, the wartime Office of Strategic Services—and at the wall of stars for CIA officers who had been killed in the line of duty.
    He walked to the guard desk, next to a series of high-tech security turnstiles, and presented himself to the morning duty officer. The guard dialed Adrian Carter's line and murmured a few words into the receiver. Then he hung up and, eyeing Michael suspiciously, told him to have a seat on one of the padded black benches in the entrance hall. A trio of pretty girls wearing jeans and sweatshirts clattered past and slipped through the turnstiles. The new CIA, Michael thought: the children's crusade. What would Wild Bill Donovan think of this place? Suddenly, he felt very old.
    Carter smiled uncharacteristically ten minutes later as he approached from the other side of the security barricade.
    "Well, well, well, the prodigal son returneth," Carter said. "Let him in, Sam. He's a troublemaker, but he's relatively harmless."
    "What the hell took you so long?" Michael said.
    "I was stuck on the phone with Monica. She wants an assessment on the situation in Northern Ireland by tomorrow."
    "Jesus Christ, Adrian, I haven't even been to my desk yet."
    136 Daniel Silva
    "First things first, Michael."
    "What?"
    "Office of Personnel, of course."
    Carter deposited Michael at Personnel, and for three hours he endured the ritual hazing required to reenter the secret world. He promised that he had no intention of betraying secrets to a foreign power. That he did not abuse alcohol or take illegal drugs. That he was not a homosexual or sexual deviant of any kind. That he did not have debts he could not pay. That he was not experiencing marital problems—other than the problems caused by my return to the Agency, he thought. Having signed and initialed all the necessary documents, he was photographed and given a new identification card with a chain to wear around his neck while inside Headquarters. He suffered through the inane lecture about not displaying the badge in public. He was also given a computer log-in and a security clearance so he could retrieve classified documents from the Agency's computerized file system.
    The Counterterrorism Center had moved during Michael's absence, from cramped quarters on the sixth floor of the old headquarters building to a sprawling expanse of white cubicles in the South Tower. To Michael, entering the vast room that morning, it looked like the claims department of an insurance conglomerate. The CTC had been established during the Reagan administration to counteract a wave of terrorist attacks against Americans and U.S. interests overseas. In the lexicon of Langley it was designated a "center" because it drew on the personnel and resources of both the clandestine and the analytical sides of the CIA. It also included staff from other government agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Justice Department, the Coast Guard, and the Federal Aviation Administration. Even the CIA's archrival, the FBI, played a major role in the
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    CTC, something that would have been condemned as heresy in the days of Michael's father.
    Carter was practicing his putt on the carpet of his spacious office and didn't see Michael arrive. The rest of the staff rose to greet him. There was Alan, a bookish FBI accountant who