The Marching Season by Daniel Silva Read Free Book Online Page A

gingerly walking the grounds, his right arm in a sling beneath a battered leather bomber jacket. Sometimes he could be seen standing at the end of the dock, gazing into the Sound. Sometimes, usually in the evening, he would seem to lose himself and stay there— like Gatsby, Martha Creighton would say—until the last light was gone.
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    "I don't understand why the traffic is so heavy in the middle of January," Elizabeth Osbourne said, drumming the nail of her forefinger on the leather center armrest. They were crawling east on the Long Island Expressway, through the town of Islip, at thirty miles per hour.
    Michael had been retired from the Central Intelligence Agency for a year, and time meant little to him—even time wasted in traffic. "It's Friday night," he said. "It's always bad on Friday night."
    The traffic thinned as they drove east from the mid-island suburbs. The night was clear and bitterly cold; a bone-white three-quarter moon hovered just above the northern horizon. The road opened before him, and Michael pressed the accelerator. The engine roared, and after a few seconds the speedometer reluctantly rose to seventy. The exigencies of fatherhood had compelled him to trade his sleek silver Jaguar for a behemoth sport utility vehicle.
    The twins, swaddled in pink and blue blankets, dozed in their car seats. Maggie, the English nanny, lay sprawled on the third seat, sleeping soundly. Elizabeth reached out in the darkness and took Michael's hand. She had returned to work that week after three months of maternity leave. While she had been away from work she had dressed in nothing but flannel shirts, baggy sweat pants, and loose-fitting khaki trousers. Now she wore the uniform of a high-priced New York lawyer: a charcoal-gray suit, a tasteful gold watch, pearl earrings. She had shed the extra weight of pregnancy by taking hour-long marches on the treadmill in the bedroom of their Fifth Avenue apartment. Beneath the crisp lines of her Calvin Klein suit, Elizabeth was slender as a fashion model. Still, the strain and fatigue of suddenly being a working
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    mother showed. Her short ash-blond hair was in mild disarray; her eyes were so red she had forsaken her contact lenses for tortoiseshell spectacles. Michael thought she looked like a law student cramming for exams.
    "How does it feel to be back?" Michael asked.
    "Like I never left. Pull over so I can have a cigarette. I can't smoke in the car with the children."
    "I don't want to make an unnecessary stop."
    "Come on, Michael!"
    "I have to stop in Riverhead for gas. You can have a cigarette then. This thing gets about five miles a gallon. I'll probably have to fill up a couple of times between here and the island."
    "Oh, God, you're not going to start bitching about the Jaguar again?"
    "I just don't understand why you got to keep your Mercedes and I'm stuck driving this beast. I feel like a soccer mom."
    "We needed a bigger car, and your mechanic got to spend more time with your Jaguar than you did."
    "I'm still not happy about it."
    "Get over it, darling."
    "If you keep talking like that, you're not going to get me in the sack tonight."
    "Don't make idle threats, Michael."
    The expressway ended at the town of Riverhead. Michael stopped at an all-night market and gas station and filled the tank. Elizabeth walked a few steps away from the pumps and smoked, stamping her feet against the concrete for warmth. She had sworn off cigarettes with the pregnancy, but two weeks after the children were born the nightmares returned, and she started smoking again to ease her nerves.
    Michael raced eastward along the North Fork of Long Island, past endless fields of sod and dormant vineyards. Now and again
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    the waters of Long Island Sound appeared on his left—black, shimmering with moonlight. He entered the village of Greenport and drove through quiet streets until he reached the landing for the North Ferry.
    Elizabeth was