The Marching Season Read Online Free PDF Page B

brick-hard folding army cot with a blanket rough as steel wool; the green oilskin jacket he had worn during the assassination served as a pillow. He survived on dry goods—biscuits, crackers, cookies, nuts—and canned meats. Cigarette smoking was permitted, though he was to be careful not to set fire to the hay. He pissed and shit in a large stockpot. The stench was unbearable at first, but gradually he grew used to it. He wanted to dump the thing, but his handlers had warned him never to set foot outside the barn, even at night.
    They had left him a strange collection of books: biographies of Wolfe Tone, Eamon De Valera, and Michael Collins and a couple of battered volumes of snarling Republican poetry. There was a handwritten note stuffed in one of them: Sun Tzu said know your enemy. Read these and learn. But most of the time the man just lay on his cot, staring into the darkness, smoking his cigarettes, reliving those few moments on the Falls Road.
    Bates heard the rattle of an engine. He rose and peered through a small window. A van clattered over the unpaved track, headlamps doused. It came to a halt in the stew of mud and gravel outside the door of the barn. Two people stepped out; the driver was large and bulky, the passenger smaller and lighter of foot. A few seconds later Bates heard a knock on the door. “Go to the cot and lie facedown,” said the voice on the other side of the door.
    Bates did as he was told. He heard the sound of two people entering the barn. A moment later the same voice commanded him to sit up. The large man was seated on a stack of feed bags; the smaller figure paced behind him like a troubled conscience.
    “Sorry about the smell,” Bates said uneasily. “I smoke to cover it up. Mind?”
    In the flare of a match Bates could see that both his visitors were wearing balaclavas. He touched the flame to the end of his cigarette and blew out the match, casting the barn into pitch darkness once more.
    “When do I get to leave?” he said.
    Before Dillon’s execution, Bates had been told he would be sent out of Northern Ireland as soon as things cooled down. There were friends in an isolated patch of the Scottish Highlands, they had told him. Somewhere the security services would never find him.
    “It’s not safe to move you yet,” the large man said. “The RUC have produced a photo-kit sketch of you. We need to let things cool down a wee bit more.”
    Bates stood abruptly. “Christ, I’m going mad in this hole! Can’t you move me somewhere else?”
    “You’re safe here for now. We can’t risk moving you again.”
    Bates sat down, defeated. He dropped the stub of his cigarette onto the dirt floor and ground it out with his shoe. “What about the others?” he asked. “The agents who did Dublin and London?”
    “They’re in hiding as well,” the man said. “That’s all I can say.”
    “Has there been a claim of responsibility yet?”
    “We did it tonight. It’s hell out there, roadblocks and checkpoints from County Antrim to the border. Until things loosen up we can’t even think about moving you.”
    Bates struck another match, illuminating the scene for an instant, the two hooded visitors, one seated, one standing, like statuary in a garden. He lit another cigarette and waved out the match.
    “Is there anything we can get for you to help pass the time?”
    “A girl of loose morals would be nice.”
    The remark was greeted with silence.
    “Lie on the cot,” the seated man said again. “Facedown.”
    Charles Bates did as he was told. He heard the rustle of the feed sacks as the large man with the tattoos on his hands rose to his feet. He heard the barn door swing open.
    Then he felt something cold and hard being pressed against the base of his skull. He heard a faint click, saw a flash of brilliant light, then only darkness.
    Rebecca Wells slipped the silenced Walther pistol into her coat pocket as she climbed into the van. Gavin Spencer started the engine, turned