The Marching Season

toward his apartment through the lamplight. Delaroche killed for two reasons: because he was hired to kill or to protect himself. Maurice Le-roux fell into the second category. He had never killed out of anger, nor had he ever killed for revenge. He believed the blood lust for revenge was the most destructive of emotions. He also thought it was unbecoming of a professional of his stature. But now, cycling through the streets of a strange city, with a face he did not recognize, Delaroche was overcome by a desire to kill Michael Osbourne.
    He saw the German girl waiting on the front steps of the house. He crossed the Herengracht to the opposite side and waited. He had no desire to see her again. Finally, she scribbled a note and shoved it beneath the door before storming off along the canal. Delaroche scooped up the note as he entered the foyer— You are a fucking bastard] Please call. Love, Eva —and pushed his bicycle into the flat.
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    He entered his studio and dropped the unfinished painting on a stack of other incomplete works. He hated it suddenly; it seemed contrived, unimaginative, tiresome. He stripped off his coat and placed a large blank canvas on his easel. He had painted her once, but the work, like the rest of his possessions, had been destroyed in Mykonos. He stood there in the half-light, thinking about it for a long time, trying to remember her face. There was a Byzantine quality about it, he remembered: wide cheekbones, a large mobile mouth, liquid blue eyes set slightly too far apart. The face of a woman from another time and place.
    He switched on the harsh halogen lamps suspended from the ceiling and started to work. He discarded one canvas because he did not like the pose and a second because the structure of her facial bones was all wrong. The third canvas felt right from the moment he started to work on it. He painted his most enduring visual memory of her—Astrid, leaning on a rusting wrought-iron railing on a hotel balcony in Cairo, wearing only a man's galabia unbuttoned to her stomach, the setting sun shining through the thin white cotton, revealing the soft lines of her back and her upturned breast.
    He worked through the night until morning. He had polluted his body with coffee and wine and cigarettes. When it was finished he could not sleep because he had a headache. He carried the canvas to his room and propped it up at the foot of his bed. Finally, sometime before noon, he fell into a restless sleep.
    30
    LONDON r. NEW YORK CITY
    Michael Osbourne was forced to remain in London for three days after the Hartley Hall affair, dealing with the real enemy of any servant of the secret world: the bureaucracy. He had spent two days giving lengthy statements to the authorities. He had helped Wheaton clean up the mess of Preston McDaniels's suicide. He had worked with Special Branch to tighten security around Douglas. He had attended a memorial service for the two SAS officers slain in the Sperrin Mountains of Northern Ireland.
    His last day in London was spent in a soundproof cell deep in the catacombs of Thames House, enduring a ritual debriefing by the mandarins of MI 5. When it was over he stalked Mill-bank in the rain for twenty minutes, searching for a taxi, because Wheaton had commandeered Michael's staff car on a dubious pretext. Finally, he retreated to Pimlico Underground station and took the tube. London, a city he loved, suddenly seemed
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    dreary and oppressive to him. He knew it was time to go home.
    Graham appeared in the drive of Winfield House the following morning to take Michael to Heathrow, this time in a Jaguar instead of his department Rover.
    "We have to make a stop on the way to the airport," Graham said, as Michael climbed into the backseat next to him. "Nothing serious, darling. Just a couple of loose ends to tie up."
    The car left Regent's Park and headed south along Baker Street. Graham changed the subject.
    "You see this?" he said, pointing to an article in that morning's Times about the mysterious murder of a prominent French plastic surgeon.
    "I glanced at it," Michael said. "What about it?"
    "He was a naughty boy."
    "What do you mean?"
    "We've always suspected he was earning a little extra cash by fixing the faces of bad guys," Graham said. "The good doctor made several house calls to exotic places like Tripoli and Damascus. We asked the French to keep a watch on him, and as usual they told us to fuck off."
    Michael