The Marching Season

murmured, "Jesus Christ."
    He hung up the telephone.
    "What's wrong?" Elizabeth said.
    "I have to go to London."
    "When?"
    Michael checked his watch. "I can make a flight tonight if I hurry."
    Elizabeth looked carefully at him. "Michael, I've never seen you like this before. What's wrong?"
    The Marching Season 207
    Early the next morning, as the British Airways jet carrying Michael Osbourne neared Heathrow Airport, Kyle Blake and Gavin Spencer walked side by side along the Market High Street of Portadown. The sky was turning gray-blue in the east with the coming dawn. Streetlamps still burned. The air smelled of farmland and baking bread. Spencer moved with the long loose-limbed walk of a man with few cares, which was not the case that morning. Kyle Blake, a head shorter and several inches narrower, had the economy of movement of a battery-powered toy. Spencer spoke for a long time, constantly pushing his forelock of thick black hair from his forehead. Blake listened intensely, lighting one cigarette after the next.
    "Maybe your eyes are playing tricks on you," Kyle Blake said, when he finally spoke. "Maybe they were telling you the truth. Maybe it was just a routine security alert."
    "They gave the car a thorough going-over," Spencer said. "And they took their fuckin' time about it."
    "Anything missing?"
    Spencer shook his head.
    "Anything there that shouldn't be there?"
    "I searched the fuckin' thing from end to end. I didn't find anything, but that doesn't mean much. Those bugs are so small, they could put one in my pocket and I wouldn't know it."
    Kyle walked in silence for a moment. Gavin Spencer was a smart man and a gifted operations chief. He was not the kind to see a threat that wasn't there.
    "If you're right—if they were after you—that means they're watching the farmhouse."
    "Aye," Spencer said. "And I just hid the first shipment of
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    Uzis there. I need those guns to do the job on the ambassador. I can kill Eamonn Dillon with a handgun, but if I'm going to assassinate an American ambassador, I need considerably more firepower."
    "What's the status of the team?"
    "The last man leaves for England tonight on the Liverpool ferry. By tomorrow evening I'll have four of my best lads in London, waiting for the order to strike. But I need those guns, Kyle."
    "So we'll get the guns."
    "But the farmhouse is under watch."
    "So we'll take out the watchers," Blake said.
    "Those men are probably protected by the SAS. I don't know about you, but I'm not in the mood to tangle with the fuckin' SAS right now."
    "We know they're out there somewhere. All we need to do is find them." Blake stopped walking and fixed a hard stare on Spencer. "Besides, if the bloody IRA can take on the SAS, so can we.
    "They're British soldiers, Kyle. We were British soldiers once, remember?"
    "We're not on the same side anymore," Blake said harshly. "If the British want to play games, we'll play fuckin' games."
    24
    LONDON
    "It appears as though you have a leak somewhere in this building," Graham Seymour said.
    They were seated around a table in a soundproof glass-enclosed cubicle in the CIA section of the embassy: Michael, Graham, Wheaton, and Douglas. When Graham spoke, Wheaton flinched, as though he had been threatened with a punch, and began squeezing his tennis ball. He was a man permanently prepared to take offense, and there was something in Graham's tone—in his bored insolent gaze—that Wheaton had never liked.
    "What makes you so certain the leak came from this building?" Wheaton said. "Maybe the leak came from your side. Special Branch provides protection for the ambassador. We give them the schedule days in advance."
    "I suppose anything's possible," Graham said.
    "Why didn't you photograph the documents?" Wheaton said.
    "Because there wasn't time," Graham replied. "I made the
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    decision that he was worth more to us in the field than in custody. We had a quick look round, planted a tracking device on his car, and let him run."
    "Who is he?" Michael asked.
    Graham opened a secure briefcase and passed out several photographs of a large man with a thick head of black hair—one police mug shot and several grainy surveillance pictures.
    "His name is Gavin Spencer," Graham said. "He used to be a rather senior man in the Ulster Volunteer Force. He was arrested once on a weapons charge, but the case was dismissed. He's a hard-liner. He quit the UVF at the outset of the peace process, because he was