The Marching Season by Daniel Silva Page A

the valley. The Range Rovers were identical: black with reflective smoked windows to shield the identity of the occupants. Each passenger had come to Morocco from a different embarkation point: Latin America, the United States, the Middle East, Western Europe. Each would leave just thirty-six hours later, when the conference had ended. There were few outsiders in Tafraoute this time of year—a team of climbers from New Zealand and a band of aging hippies from Berkeley who had descended on the mountains to pray and smoke hashish—and the caravan of Range Rovers drew curious stares as it sped along the valley floor. Children in brightly colored robes stood at the side of the track and waved excitedly as the vehicles roared past in a cloud of ginger-colored dust. No one inside waved back.
    The Society for International Development and Cooperation was a completely private organization that accepted no outside donations and no new members, except those it selected after a rigorous screening process. Nominally it was headquartered in Geneva, in a small office with a tasteful gold plaque over an austere door, which was frequently mistaken for a circumspect Swiss bank.
    Despite its benevolent-sounding name the Society as it was known to its members, was not an altruistic order. It had been formed in the years immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Its members included several current and former members of Western intelligence and security services, arms makers and weapons dealers, and also leaders of criminal enterprises such as the Russian and Sicilian mafias, South American drug cartels, and Asian crime organizations.
    The Society’s decision-making body was the eight-member executive council. The executive director was a former chief of Britain’s intelligence service, the legendary “C” of MI6. He was known simply as “the Director” and was never referred to by his real name. An experienced field man who had cut his teeth at MI6’s stations in Berlin and Moscow, the Director oversaw the Society’s administration and ran its operations from his highly secure Georgian mansion in London’s St. John’s Wood.
    The creed of the Society declared that the world had become a more dangerous place in the absence of conflict between East and West. The Cold War had provided stability and clarity, the new world order turmoil and uncertainty. Great nations had grown complacent; great armies had been castrated. Therefore, the Society sought to promote constant, controlled global tension through covert operations. In doing so it managed to earn a vast amount of money for its members and investors.
    Lately, the Director had sought to expand the role and scope of the Society. He had effectively turned the organization into an intelligence service for intelligence services, an ultrasecret operations unit that could carry out a task that, for whatever reason, a legitimate service found too risky or too distasteful.
    The Director and his staff had seen to the security arrangements. The villa sat on the rim of the small valley, surrounded by an electrified fence. The desert around the villa was a rocky no-man’s-land, covered by dozens of surveillance cameras and motion detectors. Heavily armed Society security operatives, each a former member of Britain’s elite SAS commando force, patrolled the grounds. Radio jammers broadcast electronic chaff to disrupt any long-range microphones. Real names were never spoken at meetings of the council, so each member was assigned a code name: Rodin, Monet, van Gogh, Rembrandt, Rothko, Michelangelo, and Picasso.
    They spent the day around the large swimming pool, relaxing in the cool dry desert air. At dusk they had drinks on the sweeping stone terrace, where gas heaters burned off the night chill, followed by a simple meal of Moroccan couscous.
    At midnight the Director gaveled the proceedings to order.
    For nearly an hour the Director discussed the