The Marching Season by Daniel Silva Page B

Hussein, taking aim at his face; then he lowered the gun a few inches and pulled the trigger rapidly three times. All three shots struck Ahmed Hussein in the chest.
    Two of the four bodyguards were pulling weapons from beneath their garments. Delaroche shot one through the heart and the other through the throat. The last two bodyguards threw themselves to the ground next to the bodies. Delaroche gunned the engine and raced away.
    He melted into the teeming slums of south Cairo, ditched the motorbike in an alleyway, and dropped the Beretta down a sewer. Two hours later he boarded an Alitalia flight to Rome.

CHAPTER 9

LONDON

    “How long will you be staying in the United Kingdom?” the officer in the passport control booth asked rapturelessly.
    “Just a day.”
    Michael Osbourne handed over his passport, which bore his real name because the Agency had taken back his false passports upon his retirement—at least the ones they knew about. Over the years several friendly intelligence services had also granted him passports out of professional courtesy. He could travel as a Spaniard, an Italian, an Israeli, or a Frenchman. He even had obtained an Egyptian passport from an asset inside that country’s intelligence service, which permitted him to enter certain Middle Eastern countries as a fellow Arab rather than an outsider. None of those intelligence services had asked for their passports after Michael’s departure from the secret world. They were locked in Douglas Cannon’s safe on Shelter Island.
    The inspection of his passport was taking longer than usual. Obviously, it had been flagged by the British security services. The last time Michael was in England he had been caught in the middle of the Sword of Gaza’s attack at Heathrow Airport. He had also conducted an unauthorized meeting with a man named Ivan Drozdov—a KGB defector under the care of MI6—who was murdered later that afternoon.
    “Where are you staying in the United Kingdom?” the officer asked tonelessly, reading from the small computer screen in front of him.
    “In London,” Michael said.
    The officer looked up. “Where in London, Mr. Osbourne?”
    Michael gave the officer the address of a hotel in Knights-bridge, which he dutifully wrote down. Michael knew the officer would give the address to his supervisor, and the supervisor would give it to Britain’s internal Security Service, MI5.
    “Do you have a reservation at your hotel, Mr. Osbourne?”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “Is it in your name?”
    “Yes.”
    The officer handed back the passport. “Enjoy your stay.”
    Michael picked up his slender garment bag, passed through customs, and entered the arrival hall. He had telephoned his old London car service from the plane. He scanned the waiting crowd, looking for his driver and, instinctively, any sign of surveillance: a familiar face, a figure that seemed somehow out of place, a set of eyes watching him.
    He spotted a small limousine driver in a dark suit holding a cardboard sign that said MR. STAFFORD. Michael crossed the hall and said, “Let’s go.”
    “Take your bag, sir?”
    “No, thanks.”
    Michael slumped down in the backseat of the Rover sedan as it crawled through the thick morning traffic toward the West End. The motorway had given way to the Edwardian facades of the hotels along the Cromwell Road. Michael knew London all too well; he had lived in a flat in Chelsea for more than ten years, when he was working in the field. Most CIA officers stationed abroad work from embassies, with diplomatic jobs for cover. But Michael had worked in counterterrorism, recruiting and running agents in the terrorist playgrounds of Europe and the Middle East. An assignment like that was next to impossible under diplomatic cover, so Michael had operated as an NOC, which in the lexicon of the Agency meant he had “nonofficial cover.” He posed as a salesman for a company that designed computer systems for businesses. The company was a CIA front, but