The Marching Season

gentlemen, but what I want now are results. If the peace process is to survive, we must get the gun out of Irish politics—decommission the paramilitaries. And in this atmosphere, the IRA is never going to give up their weapons."
    "If I may speak, Prime Minister?" Michael said.
    Blair nodded briskly. "Please do."
    "The fact that the Ulster Freedom Brigade engaged in an action like this suggests to me they've taken the bait. They are planning to assassinate Ambassador Cannon in Norfolk. And if they proceed they will be dealt a devastating blow."
    "Why not arrest Gavin Spencer and this Rebecca Wells woman now? Surely that would deal the Ulster Freedom Brigade a serious blow as well. And it would show the Catholics that we are doing something to stop these murderous thugs."
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    "The RUC doesn't have the kind of evidence necessary to produce an airtight case against Spencer," Graham said. "And as for Rebecca Wells, she's more valuable to us in the field than she would be behind bars."
    Blair began shuffling papers, a sign the meeting had concluded.
    "I'm going to allow this to continue," he said, then paused for a moment. "Despite what my critics say about me, I don't often engage in hyperbole. But if this group isn't stopped, the peace process will be destroyed, truly. Good morning, gentlemen."
    27
    THE NORFOLK COAST, ENGLAND
    Hartley Hall stood two miles from the North Sea, just southeast of the town of Cromer. A Norman aristocrat built the first manor house on the site in the thirteenth century. Beneath the present structure, in the labyrinth of cellars and passages, were the original medieval arches and doorways. In 1625, a wealthy merchant from Norwich named Robert Hartley built a Jacobean mansion atop the Norman manor house. To create a barrier between his home and the storms of the North Sea, he planted several thousand trees in the sandy soil along the northern edge of his land, even though he knew it would be generations before the trees reached maturity. The result was the North Wood, two hundred acres of firs, Scots pines, maples, sycamores, and beeches. Ambassador Cannon marveled at the trees as his small motorcade passed through the dark grove. A moment later, Hartley Hall floated into view.
    Robert Hartley's descendant, Sir Nicholas Hartley, stepped
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    out of the south porch as the cars pulled into the gravel drive. He was a large man with a barrel chest and a thick forelock of sandy gray hair. A pair of setters scampered at his feet. Douglas climbed out of the second car and walked a few steps across the drive with his right arm extended. The two men shook hands as though Douglas owned the manor house down the road and had been coming to Hartley Hall for fifty years.
    Hartley suggested a brief walk, even though it was not quite 40 degrees and the dusk was fading rapidly. He had no job and few interests other than chronicling the history of his ancestral home, and he lectured Douglas intensely as they moved about the grounds. A pair of Special Branch men trailed softly behind them, followed by the dogs.
    They admired the Jacobean south front, which had been designed and built by the Norfolk master mason Robert Lyminge. They meandered past the wisteria-covered east wing, with its large traceried windows and Flemish gables. They gazed upon the magnificent orangery, a large interior greenhouse overlooking the parterre where potted orange and lime trees were stored during the cold months. Beyond the walled garden lay the deer park, which once supported a herd of three hundred. They walked south along a footpath, past the stables and a terrace of servants' cottages. The five-hundred-year-old St. Margaret's Church stood atop a small promontory, a silhouette against the blue-black twilight. Around it lay the remains of a fifteenth-century village that had been abandoned after an outbreak of plague.
    By the time the two men reached the south front again, the last of the dusk was gone. Light shone through the mullion-and-transom windows, illuminating small patches of the gravel drive. They passed through the rusticated door and entered the great hall. Douglas admired the fifteenth-century English stained glass,
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    the portraits of Hartley's ancestors, and the oak writing table beneath the window. He ingratiated himself with his host by being the first American visitor to correctly identify the table as Flemish Renaissance.
    They passed through the dining room,