The Marching Season

anyway. We're working on it. She's a member of the Ulster Freedom Brigade. They're planning to assassinate my father-in-law. She was using you to gain access to his schedule and find the best time to make their attempt."
    "My God, how could she? She's such a wonderful—"
    "She's not the person you think she is."
    "How could I have been such a fool?" McDaniels was staring somewhere into the middle distance. "I knew she was too young
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    for me. That she was too pretty. But I allowed myself to actually believe that she had fallen in love with me."
    "No one's blaming you," Michael lied.
    "So what happens when it's all over?"
    "You go on with your job as if nothing happened."
    "How can I?"
    "It will be easier than you think," Michael said.
    "And what about her, whoever she is?"
    "We don't know yet," Michael said.
    "Yes, you do. You know everything. You're setting her up, aren't you."
    Michael stood abruptly, signaling that it was time to leave. McDaniels remained seated.
    "How long?" he said. "How long until this is over?"
    "I don't know."
    "How long?" he repeated.
    "Not long."
    Later that afternoon Michael sat in Wheaton's office, reviewing the new addition to Ambassador Douglas Cannon's schedule, a private visit the following weekend to the home of a friend in the Norfolk countryside. At the ambassador's request, security for the visit would be extremely light, a two-man Special Branch team with no American support. Michael finished reading it and handed it across the desk to Wheaton.
    "Think they'll bite?" Wheaton asked.
    "They should."
    "How's our boy holding up under the strain?"
    "McDaniels?"
    Wheaton nodded.
    "As well as you might expect."
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    "Meaning?"
    "Meaning we don't have a lot of time."
    "Then this had better work."
    Wheaton handed the paper back to Michael.
    "Put it in his briefcase and send it home with him tonight."
    It was just after four o'clock the next morning when Rebecca Wells rose from Preston McDaniels's bed and let herself into his study. She sat down at the desk, quietly opened the briefcase, and withdrew a sheaf of papers. Attached to the ambassador's usual schedule of official events was a note about a private weekend in the Norfolk countryside.
    Rebecca could feel her heart hammering inside her chest as she read the memo.
    It was perfect: a remote location, with plenty of advance notice for planning purposes. She took her time copying down the details. She didn't want to make a mistake.
    When she finished she felt a fierce pride. She had done her job well, just as she had done in Belfast. Eamonn Dillon was dead because of the information she had provided Kyle Blake and Gavin Spencer, and soon Ambassador Douglas Cannon would be dead too.
    She turned off the light and went back to bed.
    At the base camp in Evelyn Square, Michael Osbourne and Graham Seymour stood before the video monitors. They watched as she carefully recorded the details of the memo concerning the ambassador's trip to Norfolk. They could sense her excitement at the discovery. When she turned off the light and left the
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    room, Graham turned to Michael and said, "Think she took the bait?"
    "Hook, line, and sinker."
    The following day they watched her. They went with her to the dreary cafe outside the Earl's Court Underground stop where she had tea and a bun for breakfast. They listened when she telephoned Riccardo Ferrari at the restaurant and told him she had a family emergency, an aunt who had taken ill in Newcastle; she needed a couple of days off, four at the most. Riccardo screamed a series of obscenities at her, first in Italian, then in heavily accented English. But he won the affection of Graham Seymour's listeners when he said, "Take care of your poor aunt. There's nothing more important than family. When you're ready to come back, you come back."
    Then they listened as she telephoned Preston McDaniels at his desk at the embassy and told him she would be going away for a few days. They held their breath when McDaniels asked to see her for a few minutes before she left. They breathed a sigh of relief when she told him there wasn't time.
    And when she boarded a train for Liverpool, they let her run.
    Preston McDaniels replaced the receiver and sat at his desk. A secretary who spotted him through the open door at that moment told Michael later that poor Preston looked as though he had just been told of a death. He jumped up suddenly, announced he needed to run