The Marching Season

Silva
    "The man I have in mind for the assignment prefers to work alone/' the man said, "but I suspect he will see the wisdom of taking on a partner for this contract."
    "When do I leave?"
    "Tonight."
    "I'd like to go back to the flat, pick up a few things."
    "I'm afraid that's not possible."
    "What about Roderick? What's he going to think if I disappear without explanation?"
    "Let us worry about Roderick Campbell."
    The blond man drove the Citroen back to Montparnasse and parked outside Roderick Campbell's apartment building. He got out and crossed the street. He had stolen the woman's keys. He opened the main door on the ground level and walked up the stairs to the apartment. Removing the high-powered Herstal automatic from the waistband of his jeans, he opened the door and quietly slipped inside.
    33
    AMSTERDAM
    The forecast for the Dutch coast was decent for March, so Delaroche mounted his Italian road bike early that morning and pedaled south. He wore long black cycling breeches and a white cotton turtleneck beneath his bright-yellow jersey, tight enough to avoid flapping in the wind, loose enough to conceal the Beretta automatic beneath his left armpit. He headed south toward Leiden through the BloemboUenstreek, the largest flower-producing region in Holland, his powerful legs pumping effortlessly through fields already ablaze with color.
    For a time his eyes took in the Dutch countryside—the dikes and the canals, the windmills and the fields of flowers—but after a while the face of Maurice Leroux appeared in his thoughts. He had come to Delaroche in a dream the previous night, standing before him, white as a snowdrift, two holes in his chest, still wearing the foolish beret.
    I can be trusted. I've done many men like you.
    296 Daniel Silva
    Delaroche entered Leiden and had lunch at an outdoor cafe on the edge of the Rhine. Here, just a few miles from its mouth on the North Sea, the river was narrow and slow-moving, quite unlike the mountain whitewater near its birthplace high in the Alps or the wide industrial giant of the German plain. Delaroche ordered coffee and a sandwich of ham and cheese.
    The inability to purge his subconscious of Leroux's image unnerved him. Usually, he suffered only a brief period of uneasiness after a killing. But it had been a week since he had killed Leroux, and he still saw his face floating through his mind.
    He thought of the man called Vladimir. Delaroche had been taken from his mother at birth and given to the KGB to raise. Vladimir had been his entire world. He had trained him in languages and tradecraft. He had tried to teach him something about life before teaching him how to kill. Vladimir had warned him that it would happen eventually. One day you will take a life and that man will follow you, Vladimir had said. He will take his meals with you, share your bed. When that happens, it is time for you to leave the trade, because a man who sees ghosts can no longer behave like a professional.
    Delaroche paid his bill and left the cafe. The weather worsened as he moved toward the North Sea. The sky grew overcast and the air turned colder. He fought a stiff headwind all the way to Haarlem.
    Perhaps Vladimir had been right. Perhaps it was time for him to get out of the game before the game caught up with him. He could move back to the Mediterranean, and he could spend the days riding his bicycles and painting his paintings and drinking his wine on his terrace overlooking the sea, and to hell with Vladimir and to hell with his father, and to hell with the Director and everyone else who had forced this life on him. Perhaps he
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    could find a woman—a woman like Astrid Vogel, a woman with enough dangerous secrets of her own that she could be trusted with his.
    He had wanted to leave the business once before—he and Astrid had planned to retire in hiding together—but with Astrid gone, there hadn't been much point, and the Director had made him a generous offer that was too good to turn down. He did not kill for the Society out of conviction, though; he worked for the Director because he paid him a tremendous amount of money and because he provided Delaroche protection from his enemies. If he left the Society, Delaroche would be on his own. He would have to see to his own security or find a new guardian.
    He entered Haarlem and crossed the river Spaarne. Amsterdam was fifteen miles away, a good ride along the banks of the Noordzeekanaal. The wind was at