The Marching Season

after Michael Osbourne's departure from Lon-don, a silver Jaguar slipped into the drive of the Georgian mansion in St. John's Wood. In the backseat sat the Director. He was a small man, narrow of head and hips, with sandstone hair gone to gray and eyes the color of seawater in winter. He lived alone with a boy from the Society for protection and a girl called Daphne, who served as a receptionist and tended to his personal needs. His driver, a former member of the elite Special Air Service commandos, climbed out and opened the rear door.
    Daphne stood outside the entranceway, shielded from the driving rain by a large black umbrella. She always looked as though she had just returned from a holiday in the tropics. She was six feet tall with skin the color of caramel and brown hair streaked with blond that fell about her throat and shoulders.
    She stepped forward and escorted the Director into the entrance hall, carefully holding the umbrella aloft to make certain
    The Marching Season 183
    he remained perfectly dry. The Director was prone to recurring bronchial infection; for him the damp of the English winter was the equivalent of walking across a minefield without a grid.
    "Picasso is on the secure line from Washington," Daphne said. The Director had spent thousands of pounds on speech therapy to eliminate the lilt of Jamaica from her accent. Now she had the voice of a BBC newsreader. "Will you take the call now, or shall I ring her back?"
    "Now is fine."
    He walked straight to his study, pressed the blinking green button on the telephone, and picked up the receiver. He listened for several minutes, murmured a few words, and listened again.
    "Everything all right, petal?" Daphne asked, after the Director had replaced the receiver.
    "We need to go to Mykonos in the morning," he said. "I'm afraid Monsieur Delaroche is in rather serious trouble."
    It still felt very much like winter in London, but it was mild and sunny when the Island Air turboprop carrying the Director and Daphne touched down on Mykonos early the following afternoon. They checked into a hotel in Chora and strolled along the waterfront in Little Venice until they found the cafe. Delaroche sat at a table overlooking the harbor. He wore khaki shorts and a sleeveless boater shirt. His fingers were red and black with paint. The Director shook his hand as though he were searching for a pulse; then he pulled the white cotton handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and dabbed at his palm.
    "Any signs of the opposition?" the Director asked mildly.
    Delaroche shook his head.
    "Why don't we adjourn to your villa," the Director said. "I do like what you've done with the place."
    184 Daniel Silva
    Delaroche drove them in his battered Volvo station wagon to Cape Mavros. His canvases and easel rattled in the rear storage compartment. The Director sat in the front seat, clutching the armrest as Delaroche sped over the narrow rolling road. Daphne lay sprawled over the backseat, the breeze from the open window tossing her hair.
    Delaroche served supper on the terrace. When they had finished, Daphne excused herself and lay on a chaise out of earshot.
    "I commend you on your work in the Ahmed Hussein case," the Director said, raising his glass of wine.
    Delaroche did not return the gesture. He took no pleasure from the act of killing, only a sense of accomplishment from carrying out his assignment in a professional manner. Delaroche did not consider himself a murderer; he was an assassin. The men who ordered the killings were the real murderers. Delaroche was just the weapon.
    "The contractors are quite pleased," the Director said. His voice was as dry as dead leaves. "Hussein's death has provoked exactly the response they had hoped. It has, however, left us with a bit of a security issue where you are concerned."
    The back of Delaroche's neck turned suddenly hot with a rush of anxiety. Throughout his career he had obsessively guarded his personal security. Most people in his line of work regularly had plastic surgery to change their appearance. Delaroche dealt with it another way: Only a handful of people who knew what he really did for a living had ever seen his face. The only photographs made of him were the pictures in his false passports, and Delaroche had slightly altered his appearance in each one to make them useless to police and intelligence services. When he passed through airports or train terminals he always wore a hat and sunglasses to hide his face