The Marching Season Read Online Free PDF Page A

they chose. He believed that the annual parades were a legitimate expression of Protestant heritage and culture in Northern Ireland. And he believed that any infringement on the right to march was yet another concession to the fucking Taigs.
    To Blake, the standoff at Drumcree betrayed something much more ominous about the political landscape of Northern Ireland: The Protestant ascendancy in Ulster had crumbled, and the Catholics were winning.
    For thirty years Blake had watched the British make concession after concession to the Catholics and the IRA, but the Good Friday accords were more than he could bear. Blake believed they could lead to only one thing: British withdrawal from Northern Ireland and union with the Irish Republic. Two previous attempts at peace in Ulster—the Sunningdale Agreement and the Anglo-Irish Agreement—had been torpedoed by Protestant intransigence. Kyle Blake had vowed to destroy the Good Friday accords too.
    Last night he had taken the first step. He had engineered one of the most spectacular displays of international terrorism ever imagined, simultaneously striking at Sinn Fein, the Irish government, and the British.
    The spires of St. Mark’s Church appeared before him, looming over the Market High Street. Blake parked outside his printshop, even though it was several blocks from his destination. He carefully checked for signs of surveillance as he walked past the shuttered shops and storefronts.
    Ironically, Blake drew his tactical inspiration not from the Protestant paramilitaries of the past but from the men who had bombed his native Portadown time and time again, the IRA. Since the onset of the current Troubles in 1969, the IRA had engaged its enemies—the British army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary—and committed spectacular acts of terrorism as well. The IRA had murdered British soldiers, assassinated Lord Mountbatten, and even tried to blow up the entire British Cabinet, yet it had maintained the image of defenders of an oppressed people.
    Blake wanted to turn the sectarian politics of Northern Ireland upside down. He wanted to show the world that the Protestant way of life in Ulster was under siege. And he was willing to play the terror card to do it—harder and better than the IRA had ever dreamed.
    Blake entered a small side street and stepped inside McConville’s pub. The room was dark, crowded, and filled with a blue pall of cigarette smoke. Against the paneled walls were booths with high doors, each large enough for a half-dozen people.
    The barman behind the brass counter looked up as Blake entered. “You hear the news, Kyle?”
    Blake shook his head. “What news?”
    “There’s been a claim. It’s Prods. Some group calling themselves the Ulster Freedom Brigade.”
    “You don’t say, Jimmie.”
    The barman inclined his head toward the far corner of the room. “Gavin and Rebecca are waiting for you.”
    Blake winked and sliced his way through the room. He knocked once on the door of the booth and slipped inside. Two people were seated around the small table, a large man in a black rollneck sweater and gray corduroy sport jacket and an attractive woman in a beige woolen pullover. The man was Gavin Spencer, chief of Brigade operations. The woman was Rebecca Wells, the Brigade’s intelligence chief.
    Blake removed his coat and hung it on a hook on the wall. The barman appeared.
    Blake said, “Three Guinness, Jimmie.”
    “If you’re hungry I can run next door for some sandwiches.”
    “Sandwiches would be fine.”
    Blake handed the barman a ten-pound note; then he latched the door of the booth and sat down. They sat in silence for a moment, looking at each other. It was the first time they had dared to gather since the attacks. Each was ecstatic about the success of the operations, yet each was edgy. They realized there was no turning back now.
    “How are your men?” Blake asked Gavin Spencer.
    “They’re ready for more,” Spencer said. He had the powerful