O'Farrell's Law

TWENTY-TWO

O’FARRELL DRANK steadily throughout the flight and by the time the plane landed at Dulles had attained that frowning, carefully moving I-know-but-nobody-else-does level of drunkenness. He high-stepped his way off the aircraft onto the elevated debarkation bus, and in the terminal he missed his bag the first time it came around the carousel He thought that was funny and giggled, grinning back at people nearby who stared nervously at him.

Erickson was waiting inside the customs hall, on the other side of the checkpoint. Somebody had spoken to somebody, because O’Farrell was passed through without any hindrance. He swayed in front of Erickson and said, spacing his words, “Didn’t expect you: didn’t know what to expect, but didn’t expect you.”

“You’re drunk,” the deputy said.

“Still standing.”

“Only just,” the man said. He steered O’Farrell down to the lower level; the limousine was right outside the entrance, the driver reaching out for his bag. Tobacco smoke swirled out like fog when the door was opened and O’Farrell was further surprised.

“Didn’t expect you, either,” he said to Petty. “And Erickson’s already told me I’m drunk, so you needn’t bother.…” He’d perched on the jump seat of the limousine and turned back to the door. “Where is Erickson?” he said. “With me a moment ago.”

“He won’t be long,” Petty promised. He coughed thickly and said, “Not really the circumstance to ask how you are, is it?”

O’Farrell twisted, ensuring that the driver’s compartment was sealed off from the rear, and said, “For the record, I’m absolutely fucking awful.” He’d never sworn at Petty before, never shown the man any disrespect at all. Didn’t matter now; nothing seemed to matter now. The damned pipe smoke was making his eyes water.

“We’ll get you better,” Petty said.

O’Farrell thought the remark funny, like missing his luggage had been funny, and he giggled. “I’m not sick!” he said.

“Sure,” Petty said infuriatingly.

The passenger door opened, admitting Erickson and a welcome draft of unfogged air. To his deputy, Petty said, “Everything okay?”

“No problem,” Erickson said. “No one at all.”

O’Farrell’s drunken frown returned as he looked at the two men, and then his face cleared, in understanding. “A baby-sitter! You gave me a baby-sitter from, the embassy for the flight over, in case I got confessional.”

“Just a precaution,” Petty confirmed.

“You think I’m that fucked up!” There was a schoolboy pleasure in saying rude words to the section head.

“You’re tired; had a few drinks,” Petty said. “We’ll talk in a day or two.”

“What if I had spoken to someone on the flight?” O’Farrell persisted, with alcoholic bravado.

“Couldn’t have happened,” Petty said conversationally. “You’d have been interrupted, diverted. Forget it.”

Although the limousine was already almost to the Beltway, O’Farrell said, “Shouldn’t we tell the driver…?” and then trailed away, in belated awareness. “Where am I going?”

“Fort Pearce,” Petty said. “We need to debrief you. Give you a few days’ rest as well … just a few days.”

O’Farrell knew Fort Pearce; years ago—he couldn’t recall exactly when—he’d attended a couple of advanced training courses there on behind-the-lines survival. It was officially designated an army installation but in reality it was a CIA complex, mostly for warfare and sabotage instruction. He said, “So I’m being locked up in the stockade?”

“Of course you’re not,” Erickson said without conviction. “It’s a debriefing, that’s all. And the people at Fort Pearce have the highest clearance, so it’s the most obvious and convenient place.”

O’Farrell didn’t believe it. He wondered, although without any fear, what was going to happen to him. Whatever, he deserved it. He said, “How long is a few days?”

“Two … three …” Petty started.

“Whatever. A few days …” Erickson said.

“What then?” O’Farrell demanded.

“Let’s get the debriefing over first.” Petty said.

Erickson indicated the liquor cabinet recessed between the jump seats. “You want a drink?”

“No,” O’Farrell said at once. He squinted through the darkened windows of the car, but could not gauge where they were. “I’m not going to become unreliable,” he said, and at once regretted the remark. It sounded as if he were scared, which he wasn’t, not yet.

“We know that!” Petty said.

“Not even a consideration,” Erickson added.

“Just important to get you fit again,” Petty said.

The back-and-forth delivery seemed to be ingrained, thought O’Farrell. Annoyed at being patronized, he began, “I’m not …” but stopped, deciding it wasn’t worth the bother. He wished he’d taken Erickson’s offered drink, although he was proud that he’d held back. Would Fort Pearce be dry? He couldn’t remember from his previous visits, although he doubted this was going to be anything like his previous visits. He said, “You debriefing me?”

Petty shook his head. “There are experts at Fort Pearce.”

“Specialists,” Erickson finished.

“In what?” O’Farrell demanded pointedly.

“Everything.” Petty was avoiding him once more.

How much O’Farrell would have liked, just once, to have trapped the man, talked him into a corner and pinned him into some definite commitment. Feeling it was time—and surprised they hadn’t prompted him into it in their ventriloquist’s act—O’Farrell said, “It was a disaster. I know it was a disaster.…”

Petty raised his hand, stopping the apology. “Not now …” the section head said.

“Better later …”

“More appropriate …”

“I just wanted you to know.”

“We do …”

“Completely …”

The vehicle slowed and O’Farrell saw they were at the gates of Fort Pearce, the driver already going through the identification and entry formalities. O’Farrell would have expected the passengers to be checked, but they weren’t. The car went on for quite a long way inside the complex, wending along roads between barracks-type buildings, before stopping. When O’Farrell emerged, it was into an area he did not know from his other visits. They stood before a white-painted, clapboard building styled like barracks but taller, two storeys. The bottom floor was encircled by a covered veranda reached by steps wide enough for two or three people to climb abreast. But they didn’t. Petty led, O’Farrell followed, waved forward, with Erickson at the rear. The prisoner was under close escort, thought O’Farrell. There was a guard at the entrance, and Petty made the identification before leading on with apparent familiarity down the wide, polished-clean corridor. All the doors leading onto it were closed and there was no noise from behind any of them. Halfway down was a bulletin board forlornly bare of any notices. O’Farrell realized that after all the drinking he needed a bathroom. He looked around for one; none of the doors were designated or marked, not even with numbers.

Petty entered one practically at the end. It led into an unexpectedly expansive office whose occupant was already standing, smiling, in front of his desk. O’Farrell stared at the man curiously. He looked impossibly young, practically college age. He nodded to Petty and Erickson, previous acquaintances, but held out his hand to O’Farrell. “Lambert, John Lambert,” he said. “And you’re Charles O’Farrell. Is it Charles or Chuck?”

“It varies,” O’Farrell said. It sounded like a cocktail-party greeting and Lambert actually seemed dressed for one in his subdued Ivy League suit, pin-collared shirt, and inconspicuous club tie. Lambert wouldn’t be his real name; probably adopted just for this encounter. The man’s nose wrinkled against the pervading tobacco smell.

“Want you to understand something,” Petty said. “John’s cleared for everything. He knows what you do and all about Rivera and the accident with his wife.”

“It wasn’t an accident,” O’Farrell said quietly. He knew now why the two men had met him at Dulles Airport. Lambert had to be personally introduced and guaranteed, by people he trusted, for the debriefing to progress at all. He guessed Lambert was a psychologist more highly cleared than Symmons, one of the get-your-head-right brigade. The man really did look young.

“We’ll get to that in time,” Lambert said dismissively. “Not now. You’ll be bushed after the flight.”

How much of the tiredness was genuine fatigue and how much was alcohol-induced? O’Farrell wondered. He said, “I’m okay.”

“Tomorrow’s soon enough,” Lambert said. “Let’s get settled in first.”

Petty and Erickson, their function fulfilled, looked at each other, and Petty said, “We’ll be getting back. We’ve got a drive.”

“A few days,” O’Farrell said, sufficiently sober now to be unsettled by what was happening. It never had before, after any previous mission. But then, he reminded himself, no previous mission had ended like this one.

“That’s what we’re talking about,” Petty said.

Why was the talk like this: the casual chitchat of a cocktail party! Why weren’t they talking about a blown-apart woman named Estelle Rivera who had a well-mannered, cute little kid who’d missed being blown apart with her only by a fluke, because a car had been parked in an inconvenient place and it was raining?

“I killed someone!” O’Farrell yelled, so unexpectedly loud that Erickson, by the door, jumped. “I murdered an innocent person!”

“Easy now, easy,” Lambert soothed. “Not tonight. Later.”

“Why’s everyone avoiding it, as if it never happened! Why later?”

“No one’s avoiding it,” Lambert said, still soothing. “We’ll talk it all through, you and me, tomorrow.”

Another twenty-four hours—twelve at least—for them to discover if he’d left any trace? A possibility, O’Farrell knew. What would they do to him if he had, if there were the likelihood of the whole mess becoming a public disaster? He shifted, unsettled; the business of these men was killing potential embarrassment, wasn’t it? Wrong, perhaps, to erupt as he had. Could he back down without appearing to do so? He said, “What will the result be, after we’ve talked it all through?” and wished he’d thought of something better, something stronger.

“We won’t know that until we’ve talked, will we?” said Lambert, making a perceptible gesture for the other two men to leave. “Let’s go see where you’re going to bunk down.”

Despite the suggestion, it wasn’t a bunk. It was a bed in a single room a little farther along the same corridor. There were built-in closets and a private bathroom, a remote-controlled television, and Newsweek and Time on a table separating two easy chairs. Like every motel room in which he’d ever stayed, O’Farrell thought. He was glad to see the bathroom.

“Anything you want—food, booze, anything—just pick up the phone and tell the operator,” Lambert said.

There were two phones, one beside the bed, the second on the magazine table. O’Farrell saw that neither had a dialing mechanism. He wasn’t sure, but he thought the man had just slightly stressed the word “booze” when he’d made the offer. Testing, O’Farrell said, “It was a long flight. I wouldn’t mind walking around a little.”

Lambert grimaced, a man imparting rules he hasn’t made and doesn’t approve. “There’s not been time to get you any authorization documents,” he said. “You know what the security’s like here: the mice carry ID!”

The man who looked too young to be here at all was trying his best, O’Farrell conceded. He said, “No walks?”

“Afraid not.”

O’Farrell indicated the telephones. “What about outside calls? I need to speak to my wife.”

“Not just yet,” Lambert said apologetically. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Or the day after,” O’Farrell said.

“Maybe,” Lambert agreed.

“You going to lock the door?”

“No.”

“There’s a guard at the back as well as at the front of the building?”

“Yes,” Lambert confirmed.

“Where I would be stopped, forcibly if necessary, if I tried to go by.”

“It’s the way they’re trained in a place like this.”

“So I’m under arrest? Imprisoned?” O’Farrell demanded.

“I wouldn’t have described it as that.”

“Describe it to me your way,” O’Farrell insisted.

“Protected,” Lambert said. “Extremely well protected. I would have thought you’d be grateful.”

The men rode for a long time without speaking to each other. Petty contacted an emergency number from the car phone and had himself patched through to McCarthy for a brief, monosyllabic conversation. When he replaced the instrument, Petty said, “Our antiterrorist unit at the embassy has been allowed access by the British. More theories than you can shake a stick at. Current favorite is that it’s political, Latin American-based. Forensics has identified the explosive as Semtex and the metal left from the detonator as of Soviet manufacture.”

“Looks good, then?” Erickson, was pleased to get in first with a question rather than having to provide an answer.

“Exactly as it was planned, apart from the victim,” Petty confirmed. Before Erickson could speak again, he said, “So what about O’Farrell?”

“I think we need to get the result of the debriefing to be sure,” Erickson said. “He looked as flaky as hell when he came off that airplane. And there was the booze. There was quite a bit of it in London, too.”

“He seemed to sober up quickly enough,” Petty said. “But there’s a lot of guilt there. He’s supposed to be trained to control guilt.”

“Retire him?”

“McCarthy wants to talk to me about it.”

“What’s there to talk about?”

Petty shrugged. “Who can tell? You know what a devious bastard McCarthy is. He’s had quite a conversation with Lambert, apparently.”

“This time we seem to have gotten away with it,” Erickson said. “I think to risk using O’Farrell again would be madness.”

Petty gave another shrug. “Who knows?” he said again.

“In the immediate future we don’t have to get within a million miles of José Gaviria Rivera.”

Back in Fort Pearce, O’Farrell actually considered kneeling by the bedside, like a kid, but shook his head against the idea, looking around the empty room in positive embarrassment. He tried to pray, lying in bed in the darkness, but shrugged that attempt off, too. There could be no forgiveness, no absolution, for what he’d done. Had there ever been?

TWENTY-THREE

IT WAS an odd room. Because of the construction of the building, it should have had an outside window, but it didn’t. Neither did it really look like a proper office. There was a desk and a telephone, but books were haphazardly stacked all over it, and more books spilled over from the bookcase beyond. The television was on, showing a game in which men and women who were supposed not to know each other were romantically paired, and Lambert was propped on the edge of the desk, watching it. At O’Farrell’s entry, he turned like a man surprised and then waved him in.

“Good to see you,” Lambert said, as if their last meeting had been a long time ago. “Don’t these programs blow your mind! Can you imagine making yourself look stupid in front of millions of people!”

“I’ve never seen it before,” O’Farrell said. “But no, I can’t imagine it.”

Lambert held the remote control in his hand for several moments before reluctantly switching the television off and turning his full attention upon O’Farrell. They fascinate me,” he said. “Just fascinate me.”

Definitely a psychologist, O’Farrell thought. He supposed it had been obvious but he’d hoped Lambert wasn’t. He looked around for shapes to fit into holes but couldn’t see any. There were couches and chairs around a dead fire-place and two extension telephones on side tables. There were a lot of large plants in pots. O’Farrell recognized a rubber tree; its leaves were very dirty and dry. All the plants sagged from lack of water.

Lambert gestured vaguely toward the easy chairs and couches and said, “Make yourself at home. You like some coffee? I’ve just made some fresh coffee.”

“Thank you,” O’Farrell said. He was indifferent to the coffee but it pleased him to have Lambert fetch and carry for him. Why? he asked himself at once. Careful; he wasn’t the psychologist.

Lambert served the coffee with powdered cream and sugar in little pots on the side. With his head still bent, the man said, “So you killed her? The wrong target?”

O’Farrell blinked at the abruptness. “Yes,” he said. His headache wasn’t too bad, considering the previous day’s intake, but he felt tired, although he’d slept.

“It was an accident.”

“How the hell can you say that!”

“You intend to kill her?”

“You know I didn’t!”

“So what else can it be but an accident?”

“I wired the car, for Christ’s sake, turned it into one fucking great bomb! How can planting a load of explosives in a vehicle, which blows up and kills a person, be minimized as an accident!”

Lambert had been standing. Now he took his own coffee to an opposite chair. “What about Rivera? What if he’d turned the key and he’d been the person killed?”

O’Farrell frowned. “What about it? I’ve gone through all the evidence against him. He’s guilty; involved in criminal activity against the interests and security of this country.”

“So it’s okay to blow him away! No conscience problem there!”

This was like getting into the ring with a far superior boxer constantly able to jab past your defenses. O’Farrell said, “That is the function I am employed to carry out on behalf of the United States of America.”

“Well recited!” Lambert mocked. “You comfortable with that?”

“Of course I am.”

“Why of course? Where’s the natural consequence come in?”

O’Farrell was sweating and put his cup down before he spilled it. This man was bewildering him. Hopefully he said, “There are some people, a few, who are beyond normal parameters; beyond the law, if you like. People capable of great harm, great hurt. The judgment against them is not reached by a court of law, but it is as fair and impartial as if it were.”

“Hitler … Stalin … Amin. Killing saves lives,” Lambert completed. “I’m familiar with the list; it’s a cliché. You know what? I don’t think you believe that. Maybe once, but not anymore.”

O’Farrell was glad he was sitting down because his head was swirling. The ache was worse, too. He thought he saw an escape and went for it. “It’s an academic debate anyway, isn’t it?”

“Why?” asked Lambert.

“I’m hardly likely to be used again, after this debacle, am I?”

“Whose choice not to be used again? Yours? Or the Agency’s?”

Jab, jab. jab, O’Farrell thought. “The Agency’s, I would have thought.”

“Why?”

“This record seems to be stuck.” O’Farrell chanced the sarcasm but was unsure if he should take the risk. Speaking overly slowly, he said: “In London, England. I made a bomb that killed someone who should not have died. As of yesterday, I became an operative too unreliable to trust anymore.”

“Who said that?”

“Nobody said it. It’s obvious.” It was the first time since the disaster that O’Farrell had thought fully about it. And its personal implications. So he’d lose the hidden salary. So what? The value of the house in Alexandria had to have increased twofold at least over what he’d paid for it. If the allowances to the kids became too much of a burden, he could always sell it and buy something cheaper, cheaper but still a damned nice house.

“How would you feel about that, being taken off the active roster?” Lambert persisted.

O’Farrell came close to smiling at the absurdity of the expression; was that a cosmetic name for Petty’s department, the active roster? Slowly again, but for a different sort of reason this time, he said, “It would be wrong—morally and mentally—for me to enjoy what I do. I’d be some sort of psychopath. I have sincerely considered every mission I have undertaken to be justified, like Rivera’s removal. I have never thought of being taken”—he stopped at the phrase, then pushed on—“off the active roster in the middle of an operation. If that’s the way it ends …” He shrugged, struggling for words. “Then it ends,” he finished badly. Toward the conclusion he’d been floundering, O’Farrell admitted to himself. Worse, it appeared as if he’d been trying to convince Lambert about his function, about the whole existence of his department within the CIA.

“A soldier, obeying orders?”

“I find that a good analogy.”

“And you were a professional but special soldier before you joined the Agency, weren’t you? And professional soldiers are taught to kill. Especially your unit.”

“Under proper rules of engagement,” O’Farrell qualified.

“Was that how you saw your missions? Obeying orders like a professional soldier, following unusual but properly established rules of engagement?”

“I said I felt comfortable with the analogy. Perhaps that’s how I felt sometimes.” Nothing was coming out as he wanted; he felt hopelessly inferior to this man, who had to be at least ten years his junior and seemed to know everything that had ever gone on in his mind. Lambert was far more formidable than Symmons. O’Farrell realized for the first time that Lambert was wearing the same suit and shirt as the previous evening; perhaps there really had been a party where he’d gotten lucky and not gone home.

For a long time Lambert stared at him, blank-faced and unspeaking. Finally the man said, “Charles O’Farrell, that marshal ancestor of yours, never did that, did he? Never quit or got taken off anything before it was properly ended. Before justice was done.”

That wasn’t a jab; that was practically a knockout blow. “I don’t think so; not that I have been able to find out.” The words strained out, dry-throated.

“What about him?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“Didn’t you see some comparison there, between yourself and your great-grandfather?”

O’Farrell gulped some coffee to ease his throat. “Not really,” he lied knowingly. “Maybe there’s a similarity. I never thought about it.”

Again there was a long, silent stare and O’Farrell read disbelief into it. Lambert said, “What do you think of the booze in London making you careless? A factor in the accident?”

Another body blow, worse than before. O’Farrell breathed in deeply, as if he had been winded. Had to fight back, he thought, stop appearing so helpless! He said, “You seem to have carried out a pretty deep profile.”

“Normal precautions, like every assignment,’’ Lambert said. He smiled. “A rule of engagement.”

Which was true, O’Farrell knew. He’d spotted the watchers himself. As forcefully as he could, he said, “What’s this all about?” and thought it was a demand he should have made before now.

“Didn’t you expect there to be an inquiry?”

“By Petty and Erickson certainly. Maybe others, from my section or Plans. Not being held a virtual prisoner in any army camp and interrogated by a psychologist!”

“That’s interesting!” Lambert said, as if he’d located an odd-shaped fossil on a stony beach. “Is that what you consider this to be, an interrogation?”

It had been an exaggeration, O’Farrell conceded. This wasn’t really an interrogation, not the sort he’d been trained to resist. Why then was he so unsettled by it? He said, “Perhaps not quite that,” and hated the weak response, just as he disliked most of his other replies. Trying to recover, he said, “You didn’t answer my question: what’s it all about, this interview?”

“Your state of mind,” Lambert announced disquietingly. “And you didn’t answer mine. What about the booze?”

“I had a few drinks,” O’Farrell said, stiffly formal. “I never endangered the operation. It had no bearing whatsoever upon the accident.”

“Well done!” Lambert said, congratulatory.

“I don’t …” O’Farrell started, and then paused. “I won’t—I can’t—consider it an accident. I never will be able to.”

“You just called it that.”

O’Farrell shook his head wearily. “I didn’t think sufficiently. It’s the wrong word; will always be the wrong word. It was murder. We both know that.”

“Innocent people get killed in wars.”

“What the fuck sort of rationale is that!” O’Farrell erupted. “We’re not talking about a war! Stop it! The professional-soldier pitch won’t get to me. I’ve thought it through; it doesn’t fit.”

“So you’re quitting?”

“We’ve gone down this road as well,” O’Farrell protested. “I’m unacceptable.”

“Your judgment,” Lambert reminded him. “What if other people … Petty and Erickson and people in Plans, all of them, think like I do? What about if they all consider it an accident and don’t contemplate terminating your active role?”

“What about it?” O’Farrell knew the question was coming, but delayed it with his own query to think of an answer better than those he’d so far offered.

“You going to resign?” the man asked bluntly.

“I don’t know”. What the fuck was he saying! He’d thought of nothing else, waking or sleeping, for months; had thought about it this very day in this very room, working out the logistics of selling the house! He wanted to quit—needed to quit—more than he’d wanted to do anything else in his entire life. So why didn’t he just say so! Easiest word in the language: yes. Yes, I want to quit. Get away from all this mumbo-jumbo psychology and these ridiculous briefings in ridiculous places, immerse myself in my boring figures in my boring office and truly become the boring clerk everyone thinks I am, catching the adventurers manipulating their expenses and being despised by my wife for not intervening in squalid public arguments.

“Not even thought about it?” Lambert persisted.

“Of course I’ve thought about it; haven’t you thought of chucking what you do?”

Lambert genuinely appeared to consider the question. “No,” he said. “I never have. I like what I do very much.”

“What is it? I mean, I know your job, but why—and what—here, in the middle of a CIA training facility?”

“Talk to people with motivational doubts, like you,” Lambert said.

“Is that the diagnosis? Lacking motivation?”

Lambert’s expression was more a grin than a smile. “Nothing so simple.” he said. “You know what professional medics are like—three pages of bullshit, complete with reference notes and source material, to express a single idea.”

“Which is that I am lacking motivation?”

“Aren’t you?” Question for question.

“I don’t think—”

“You do,” Lambert said, blocking another escape.

O’Farrell refused to answer, caught by a sudden, disturbing thought. “How did the Agency find out about my family archive?”

“Didn’t you have some work done on it?” Lambert asked casually.

The copying, O’Farrell remembered. So it hadn’t been some Agency break-in squad poking through the house, prying into everything, maybe sniggering and joking over what they found, while Jill was at work or in Chicago. O’Farrell was relieved. Lambert was lounging back comfortably in his chair, apparently waiting for him to say something. “Well?” O’Farrell said.

“We were talking about motivation.”

“You were,” O’Farrell corrected, deciding how to continue. “And you seemed to think I’d lost it.”

“Haven’t you?”

“Yes,” O’Farrell said bluntly. He’d said it! And he had the acceptable explanation ready. If this sneaky bastard took it, this debriefing could end and he could go home to Jill.

“A breakthrough!” Lambert said.

“Is that surprising, after murdering someone?”

Another of the long, silent stares, broken this time by a slow headshake of refusal. Then the psychologist said, “Is that how you intend to use the accident?”

“I’m not using it for anything!” said O’Farrell, knowing he had lost, too exasperated to deny Lambert’s choice of word.

“You began assembling all that stuff on your great-grandfather, making the lawman comparison, long before the Rivera assignment,” said the man. “Drinking too.”

O’Farrell shook his head, genuinely weary. “Think what you like. I don’t give a damn.”

“You just want to go home, go to bed, and pull the covers over your head.”

O’Farrell went physically hot because that was exactly what he had been thinking. “Maybe just that.”

Lambert rose from his seat, but halfway toward the coffeepot he hesitated. “Would you like a drink? Something stronger than coffee, I mean.”

O’Farrell ached for a drink. He shook his head. “Not even coffee.”

“You do that, do you?” Lambert asked conversationally. “Set yourself limits and feel proud, as if you’ve achieved something, when you stay within them?”

Like everything else during the meeting, it was a small but complete performance to make another point, O’Farrell realized. He was still hot but now with anger against the man it seemed impossible to outtalk. “No,” he said.

Lambert smiled, with more disbelief, and continued on to the coffee machine. Standing there, he said. “I don’t blame you. I’m surprised the doubts haven’t come long before now.”

O’Farrell frowned, further bewilderment. “Whose side are you on!” he said.

Lambert, smiling, walked back to his chair. More to himself than to O’Farrell, he said. “There have to be sides, good or bad, right or wrong.…” He looked up, open-faced. “I’m on your side, if that’s the way you want to think about it. That’s why I want to get the truth, everything, out into the open, so we can talk it all through, lay all the ghosts.”

“Why?” O’Farrell asked suspiciously.

“Why!” Lambert echoed, surprised. “You were flaky before England. With all the guilt after the accident you’re going to become a pretty fucked-up guy, aren’t you? And the Agency worries about fucked-up guys, particularly in your section.”

“Okay,” O’Farrell said, not really knowing to what he was agreeing.

“You’re out of balance,” Lambert said. “For months, maybe longer, it’s been difficult morally for you to go along with what you’ve been doing, right?”

O’Farrell nodded. There was a vague feeling, too vague for relief but something like it, at the admission, at talking at last to someone who understood.

“Why not?” Lambert said, not wanting an answer. “Within the strict lines of morality, how can you justify taking another life? It’s difficult to fit, whichever way you twist it.”

“More than difficult.”

“Is it, though?” Lambert demanded at once. “I said earlier they were clichés, but wouldn’t millions of lives have been saved and the suffering of millions more been avoided if Hitler and Stalin and Amin had been removed? Isn’t there the need for that sort of justice?”

“Decided upon by whom!” O’Farrell came back. “Who are these unknown wise men with clairvoyant powers that can’t be appealed! What gives them the right to sit in judgment!”

Lambert sat nodding, as if he were agreeing, but said, “That’s a weak argument. Won’t stand examination. Have you, personally, ever been asked to move against anybody in anticipation of their evil?”

O’Farrell did not reply for several moments. “No,” he admitted begrudgingly.

“Have you, personally, ever had the slightest doubt of the guilt of the person in any mission you have been asked to undertake?”

“No,” O’Farrell conceded.

“If any of them had appeared in a court of law and the evidence against them had been presented, what would the judgment have been?”

“Guilty,” O’Farrell said. Hopefully he added, “Although it’s debatable whether the verdict would have been death.”

Lambert was ready for him. “Let’s debate it then. According to the judgment of their own country, was it more than likely that the sentence would have been death?”

“I suppose so,” O’Farrell said.

“Judged according to their own standards?”

“Yes,” O’Farrell capitulated.

“You were in Special Forces?”

“Yes.”

“Ever had any difficulty carrying out a morally objectionable order in the army?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I … it was …” O’Farrell stumbled.

“Because you had the right,” Lambert supplied. “You had a service number and a rank and usually a uniform and that gave you the right. More than that, even. If anything went wrong, as it went wrong yesterday in London, the ultimate responsibility wasn’t yours—”

“But it was yesterday,” O’Farrell broke in. “I didn’t have any right to kill Estelle Rivera.”

“So yon didn’t try to kill her!” Lambert said, equally insistent. “It was an accident.”

O’Farrell sighed, but with less exasperation than before. He definitely did feel better talking to this man, convoluted though at times he found the reasoning. He supposed that by a stretch of the imagination—a stretch he was still unprepared to make—the London incident could be considered an accident. He wasn’t prepared to dispute it anymore. “And I don’t have a rank or a serial number, either.”

“Part of the same problem,” Lambert said. “No official backing or support. Minimal, at best. Guess your great-grandfather operated that way a lot of the time, though.”

O’Farrell thought it was the first time the psychologist had strained too hard to win a point. He said, “A dogtag or a badge. I can think of them as the same.”

“So where are we?” Lambert appeared to feel the same as O’Farrell about his earlier remark.

“You tell me,” O’Farrell said, enjoying the temporary supremacy.

“Talked through for today, I guess.”

“I want to go home,” O’Farrell announced. “There’s nothing left for us to talk about.”

“Give me another day, to sort a couple of things out in my mind,” Lambert said. “Just a day or two.”

“One day just became two,” O’Farrell said.

“Evening of the second day. My word.”

“If it’s not, I’m going to test the quickness of the guys on guard,” O’Farrell said.

“Sure you are,” Lambert said, and O’Farrell regretted the bravado; he had sounded like a child protesting that he was unafraid of the dark when really he was terrified.

In addition to the genuine mourners, there was a large contingent from the Cuban security service and more from the Diplomatic Protection Squad. Rivera didn’t object, although he disliked having so many guardians constantly around him. “Highly professional and skilled” was the forensic description of the assassination; so Belac had gone to a lot of trouble, employing the best. But then, it was logical that the arms dealer would know the best. It was his business to know things like that. Beside him Rivera felt a slight movement, as Jorge clutched his leg. Rivera put his arm around the boy’s shoulders and pulled him closer. Jorge had cried a little in the church but had recovered now, in the churchyard, and Rivera was proud of him. At the touch Jorge looked up through filmy eyes and smiled slightly, and Rivera hugged him again.

Rivera kept his head bowed because it was expected but managed to look quite a way beyond the priest saying whatever he was saying over the coffin, which was resting on the lip of the grave. Rivera hadn’t expected there to be so many people. They were crowded together, solemn-faced, and the immediate grave area was a blaze of flowers; some of the wreaths were quite elaborate. He was glad he’d deputed a secretary to make a note of the names so he could write later.

The coffin was lowered. Rivera felt a nudge of encouragement from someone and took the offered trowel, casting earth into the grave, giving it in turn to Jorge. When the boy moved, there was a chatter of camera shutters. Rivera wondered if the photographs would appear in the papers belonging to Henrietta’s husband. After the bombing they had described him as a playboy diplomat, and he’d made a mock complaint to Henrietta.

Rivera thanked the priest, whose name he could not remember, and hesitated on the pathway back to the cars for people to murmur their regrets as they filed by. He murmured his thanks in return. Some of the women patted Jorge’s head as they passed. Rivera wished they hadn’t and knew Jorge would feel the same way, too.

The cortege had left from the embassy and not the Hampstead house because it still bore the burns and damage of the explosion, so it had been easy for Rivera to give the instructions to his First Secretary.

The man was beside him now Rivera said, “Well?”

“No, Excellency.”

“You sure?”

“Quite sure.”

Rivera was disappointed. He had quite expected the man to attend.

The line was almost over before the First Secretary leaned toward Rivera and said, “Here, Excellency,” and Rivera stretched out a limp hand to accept that of Albert Lopelle, Estelle’s French lover.

The formality over, Rivera hustled Jorge into the car but remained outside himself. To his First Secretary, he said, “You have to be wrong. That can’t be Albert Lopelle.”

“I assure you it is,” said the man. “I have met him several times.”

Rivera looked in disbelief after the Frenchman. He was so fat he walked with a rolling gait, and he was short, not much over five-five, and visibly balding. The handshake had been wet with perspiration, which was perhaps understandable, but Rivera guessed the man perspired a lot.

“Incredible,” Rivera said, finally entering the car. He felt offended that Estelle should have considered leaving him for such a man, empty though their marriage had been.

TWENTY-FOUR

RIVERA HAD never imagined that Pierre Belac would try to kill him, no matter how acrimonious their dealings became. Now, after the attempt, it was very easy to do so. Rivera remained frightened. No longer for himself. But for Jorge, who had almost died as it was. Jorge had to be protected. Permanently, not temporarily by all these squads milling about, squads who’d eventually be withdrawn.

Safety would be easily enough achieved. All he had to do was pay over the withheld ten percent, which he’d agreed to do in Paris and which he’d always intended to do anyway. He’d like to be able to tell Belac that. But he didn’t know where Belac was. And if he were to do so, it would make him appear scared. And that couldn’t be allowed. Rivera wished, fleetingly, there were some way he could go on withholding the outstanding money to teach Belac the lesson the bastard deserved. But he had to think of Jorge. He’d settle everything as soon as the City of Athens left San Diego.

Rivera apportioned Estelle’s death into advantages and disadvantages. An unquestionable advantage was how he came to be regarded by his government. Predictably Havana overreacted, immediately drafting extra bodyguard officers from the Directión Generale de Inteligencia, some of whom entered the country unofficially because the diplomatic complement at the embassy was already complete.

With them came the deputy director of the DGI, a sympathy-offering general named Ramirez, to head their own investigation. The apparently grieving Rivera showed the proper and expected caution, checking first with Havana mat the man was cleared to discuss the arms shipments before offering his carefully prepared story. Arms dealing was a close-knit, jealous, and violent business; the general surely knew that? Here a modest shoulder shrug, eyes sadly averted. Rivera’d known and accepted the danger to himself, never imagining it embracing his family. The attack had only one logical explanation; arms dealer against arms dealer, eliminating the source of such lucrative contracts. Another shrug. Perhaps it was fortunate that the order was so close to completion, removing the reason for jealousy, for murder. Rivera smiled the sad smile of a man bereaved He had suffered. Rivera offered, the sacrifice a loyal servant of the State was sometimes required to suffer. He was heartbroken. But still—unshakably—the same loyal servant.

Ramirez probed for the possible identity of jealous arms dealers. Rivera, determined that his hidden Swiss bank account stay very hidden, said he didn’t know, but intended to find out through the network of contacts he had established. Ramirez said that if a name or names could be confirmed, the DGI had been ordered at the highest level in Havana to match the retribution to the crime and that the DGI had every intention of carrying out that order if it became possible. The extra bodyguards would remain, Ramirez promised, under the control of the local station chief, Carlos Mendez. The official ambassadorial residence was to be fitted throughout with an extensive security system. In the immediate future, dog handlers would be employed to patrol at night. Rivera again smiled his thanks, resenting the protection even more. It was important, he stressed, for him sometimes—quite frequently, in fact—to move about unescorted: arms dealers were secretive men, nervous of identification. For the moment, the general insisted, such encounters had to be restricted. Rivera accepted the edict, realizing it would be wrong to press the argument.

The protection created the biggest disadvantage. In addition to his own people, the British assigned men from the Diplomatic Protection Squad, building a virtual wall between him and Henrietta. And her initial distancing reaction when he telephoned the day after the funeral wasn’t what he had expected, either.

“Maybe it’s a good thing, for a while,” said the woman, almost casually.

“What!” he said, surprised.

“Someone tried to kill you, that’s what you said. What if they try again?”

Rivera sighed. It had been a mistake, trying to impress her. He supposed it was natural she should be frightened. “I don’t think there’s much chance.”

“How can you say that!”

Because Belac will be too scared himself to make another attempt, Rivera thought. “They’ll know the security that’ll be in place now.”

“That doesn’t sound a very convincing reason to me,” said Henrietta. “Who’s trying to kill you? And why?”

It was an obvious question, and Rivera was prepared for it. “You know the opposition that exists against Castro? And what my family were—aristocrats—before the revolution? I’m regarded as a traitor, for joining Castro instead of the opposition.”

Henrietta was quiet for so long that Rivera thought they had been disconnected and said, “Hello?”

“You saying the anti-Castro people tried to kill you for that!”

It hadn’t sounded as good as he’d expected, Rivera conceded. Improvising, he said, “There’ve been threats in Havana, apparently. I wasn’t identified, but the government thinks it all fits. It’s another reason for thinking there’s not a lot of risk now; having failed here, they’ll choose another target somewhere else.”

“What’s it feel like, knowing people tried to kill you?” Henrietta was a complete sensualist, and for the first time her voice sounded normal.

“Strange,” he said, improvising further because he knew her need. “I felt suspended to begin with, numbed—”

“What about excited!”

“Yes, later. Very excited.”

“Excited like you know I mean?”

“Yes,” Rivera said. There were occasions during their lovemaking when Rivera was nervous about what she’d wanted to do much as he was uneasy now.

“I wish we could meet,” she said, soft-voiced.

“I’ll find a way,” Rivera said emptily. He’d tried for a long time, before telephoning her, to think of something and failed.

“What would it matter if the security people knew we were together anyway?” Henrietta demanded.

It was a valid question; where, precisely, was the problem? “That’s really more of a difficulty for you than for me now. You’re the one who’s got the husband.”

“Only in name, dear.” Henrietta giggled. “I don’t see why it should be a difficulty. They won’t be in the room with us, after all, will they? As far as they are concerned, you’re simply visiting friends.”

It was certainly a way. Rivera realized. And he wanted a way, because already he was missing her. He wished he could gauge how she really felt. Now that Estelle was gone, there were a lot of possibilities they could consider together. Rivera tried to find the drawbacks to Henrietta’s suggestion. Very few, he conceded. Mendez would obviously report to Havana, using the newly restored authority so long denied him, which might possibly prompt a query, but an explanation was easy. He was cultivating Sir William Blanchard, an influential newspaper magnate, in the hope of getting articles favorable to Cuba in the man’s publications. He could, in fact, send his own report to Havana, in anticipation of it being demanded. He said, “I think you’ve found the answer.”

“When?” she demanded instantly.

For the first time Rivera remembered how recently Estelle had died. “Not for a day or two.”

“William’s away all next week.”

“Certainly next week then.”

“Before if you can.”

“I promise.”

That night, in that part of the diplomatic pouch only Rivera was allowed to open, came the confirmation: the master of the City of Athens was scheduling his departure from San Diego in two days’ time. The ambassador was relieved that the lading had gone uninterrupted. It meant, he realized, that $12 million should be transferred to Belac, to complete their deal. Rivera smiled, less frightened than he had been immediately after Estelle’s assassination. He’d hold on to it for a few more days. He was well enough protected, for the time being. It would be good, showing Belac he was unafraid.

It was a sprawling complex they could enter separately without any suggestion of a meeting, and inside the security was absolute, so McCarthy and Sneider traveled to Fort Pearce separately from Petty and Erickson for the meeting with Lambert.

There was a game show on the television when the group entered Lambert’s office, and for several moments the psychologist kept it running, gesturing toward it.

“Do you know that in half an hour of a show like this, you can see most of the theories of Freud with a few of Jung’s, for good measure?” he asked.

“If you say so,” McCarthy said, unimpressed.

Lambert took the hint and switched the set off. “Coffee or booze?” he invited.

“Booze.” McCarthy’s coffee drinking ended promptly with the beginning of happy hour. “You got Wild Turkey?”

“Yes,” Lambert said; he stocked it for this meeting, knowing McCarthy’s preference.

“Two fingers, with a little branch water. No ice,” McCarthy stipulated.

“The same,” Sneider said.

Petty declined a drink. The ulcer was giving him hell and the medication wasn’t helping a damn. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Do you mind if I fart?” Lambert asked.

Petty already had his hand lifted hopefully toward his top pocket. He stopped, frowning. “What’s that mean?”

“Means I find pipe smoking offensive in public, like farting.” Lambert said.

McCarthy chuckled, accepting his drink. “We’re all of us going to wear you down in the end, George. Why don’t you just surrender?”

Petty dropped heavily into a chair, leaving his pipe where it was. He said, “O’Farrell gone?”

“About two hours ago,” the psychologist said.

“Tell me in simple words, no inside-the-head crap,” McCarthy said.

“There was a great deal of guilt about wrongly killing the woman; I got rid of a lot of it,” said Lambert. “At the end he was calling it an accident as a matter of course. But that really just provided a focus for the real problem. He’s started to question the morality: what right have we to decide upon life or death? I think I got him back more or less on course there. He’s proud of his army service, the medals and the recognition for being a gung-ho, behind-the-lines bastard. Which is another problem: he doesn’t have the security blanket of knowing there’s someone or something behind him if he fouls up. That was his real emotion coming back on the plane. Plenty of guilt, sure. But terror for himself, too. The ancestral archive is him grabbing out for some sort of justification, wanting to imagine himself the lawman.”

“What about the mother and the father and the Russian thing?” Sneider asked.

Lambert shook his head, going to his coffee machine. “No particular trauma there. He regrets not visiting them more when they got older, thinks he might have seen some change in his mother in time to get her treatment and prevent it happening, but it’s not a big problem for him.”

“It did happen though, didn’t it?” McCarthy pressed.

“What?” Lambert frowned.

McCarthy gave a dismissive head movement. “Talking to myself,” he said. “He mention Makarevich at all?”

“Never,” Lambert said at once.

“So what’s the bottom line?” Petty asked. “Can he work again or not?”

“Depends how you wrap the package,” Lambert said. “O’Farrell’s got a lot of pride, about his house and his family and looking after everyone; about doing everything right. Proud of not being a quitter; that was a phrase that came out several times, as we talked. And then there’s the flag and the country and patriotism. I’m pretty sure it’s genuine, but of course it makes it easy for him to think of himself as the soldier he once was.”

“So how the hell do you wrap that up in a package that doesn’t leak!” Sneider demanded.

“I don’t know,” Lambert admitted. “Everything would depend on the assignment. He’d have to believe it absolutely—more absolutely than the checks and balances he’s previously been allowed—even to consider it.”

“Let’s skin the cat another way,” Erickson said. “Let’s say we did all that, proved that the devil had made it back in human form. What are the chances of O’Farrell’s nerve going or his motivation failing and everything going splat, right in our faces?”

“Always a possibility,” Lambert said unhelpfully. “Always has been, always will be, unless you employ psychos. O’Farrell said something like that himself.”

“I’m not getting a lot of guidance here,” Petty protested. “None of us are.”

“I’m giving you my opinion,” Lambert said. “Not what I think you want to hear. Aren’t we trying to prevent everything going splat, right in our faces?”

McCarthy grimaced. “Didn’t you ask him outright if he wanted to quit?”

“A few times,” Lambert said. “I never got a full answer, on any occasion. First he’d say yes, then he’d say no.”

“What did that signify?”

“‘I’m not a quitter,’” Lambert quoted.

“I don’t think it’s sufficient, any of it,” Erickson said. “So far we’ve lost nothing. We’ve been lucky. Let’s cut loose while we’re still ahead.”

“That’s my feeling, too,” Petty said.

McCarthy held out his glass to be replenished, and when Lambert returned with it, the Plans director said to the psychologist, “What decision would you make in our position?”

Lambert stared down at the man for several moments. “It’s possible.” the psychologist said. “Possible but dangerous. On balance, you’re going to need a hell of a lot of luck.”

“It’s always dangerous,” Sneider said.

“I’ve got an idea,” McCarthy said. “A hell of an idea.”

“We cut adrift from O’Farrell?” Sneider anticipated, for once wrongly.

The Plans Director frowned at his deputy. “Christ, no!” he said. “Whatever made you think that?”

TWENTY-FIVE

JILL WASN’T there when he got back to Alexandria. Three or four days earlier, before the sessions with Lambert, it would have thrown him for a loop, because he’d telephoned from Fort Pearce hours ahead, telling her of his supposed return on the afternoon British Airways flight. As it was, he contained the reaction to mild surprise. Jill was conscientious and often worked late at the clinic; hours sometimes, although he didn’t think she would tonight because she knew he was getting back.

He made a drink and wandered about the house, feeling its familiarity wrap comfortingly around him. He felt safe, secure. The impression reminded him of what Lambert had said, at one of their sessions; the first, he thought, although he wasn’t sure. The man had been right. Climbing under the bedcovers was just what he’d wanted to do; hide for a long time in the darkness, where no one could find him. Know he was there, even. He’d needed Lambert, needed the man more than he could calculate at this moment. Not that he could forget what had happened in London. It had been appalling and would always be with him. But Lambert had put it into perspective for him; he didn’t have any problem with the word “accident” anymore. Because that was what it had been: an appalling, ugly accident. But accidents happened. How had Lambert put it? The very fact that this was the first, ever, showed how careful he was, how professional. Something like that.

It had been an incredible relief to be able to talk as he’d talked to Lambert. He knew the feeling was ridiculous, after so short a time, but he found it easy to think of Lambert as a friend, the way the man had asked him to. Think of me as a friend, someone you can call and talk about anything, anytime. O’Farrell wasn’t sure that he would. It was all right this time, because of the circumstances. He’d needed the man. But to want to talk through things again might make Lambert think he was sonic soft of goofball, one of those goofballs who kept regular weekly appointments with a shrink and couldn’t function without them. Then again, he might. It wasn’t something he had to decide right now.

The tour inevitably ended in the den. The copied archive and the fading photograph that Jill had collected for him were still packaged, waiting to be refiled. He’d known the Agency kept tabs on him—it was a logical precaution—but he’d never guessed it was so complete. O’Farrell jerked his head up at a thought, gazing around the bookshelves and the furniture, at everything. Would the house be wired? With Jill out every day, the technical people would have had every opportunity to set a system up. O’Farrell started to move and then stopped, sitting back in his chair. He’d be wasting his time. The micro-technology now was so advanced that even an expert, like he was supposed to be, wouldn’t find anything. It was an eerie thought; unsettling. He didn’t bother with the files. The copied photograph was disappointing; his great-grandfather looked different, oddly, absurdly, more like the gunslingers he’d hunted than the lawman he had been.

O’Farrell checked his watch. He’d been home for over an hour. Where was Jill? An emergency, perhaps? But why hadn’t she called, or had a secretary call?

The clinic receptionist was a bouncy black girl named Annabelle who said hi and how was London and she wanted to go there someday. If there were an electronic monitor, Langley wasn’t going to be pleased, O’Farrell thought. Annabelle, confused, said Jill had left hours ago, around lunchtime, without saying where she was going. O’Farrell’s immediate thought was Chicago, and he was relieved that Ellen was in the apartment. Ellen was as surprised as the receptionist at the clinic; she’d spoken to her mother the previous evening but there’d been no arrangements for her to fly up. O’Farrell said there had to be some misunderstanding at his end and it was unimportant, carrying on the conversation that was necessary. Billy was fine and Patrick had promised to clear up the arrears and maintain both the alimony and child support in the future, so she didn’t think it was necessary to start any legal pressure at the moment. Patrick had gotten a job as a car salesman and the commissions were good and wasn’t that terrific? O’Farrell sadly decided that Jill was right, that their daughter still loved the bastard, and agreed it was terrific if the payments kept coming. They would, said Ellen. This time Patrick had really promised. He was seeing Billy again, too. The previous weekend he’d bought the boy an electrically controlled car.

“So how was your trip?”

O’Farrell waited for the stomach drop, but there was nothing. He said, “Just work,” and his voice stayed perfectly even.

“Nothing exciting at all?”

O’Farrell swallowed. “Nothing,” he said, with more difficulty.

“I love you, Dad.”

“I love you, too.”

O’Farrell gratefully replaced the receiver, filling his mind with the immediate problem. So where was Jill? She was a woman of habit, of regularity, someone who didn’t take afternoons off without saying where she would be. He felt the beginnings of concern. And then of helplessness. He could try the police covering the district where the clinic was, to see if there’d been any reports of an accident, but what then? Ask for the car number to be posted and circulated, maybe, but they wouldn’t do that, unless he had cause to think she’d been involved in some crime; there had to be dozens of husbands and wives late home every night. He was right, he told himself; there were dozens of husbands and wives late home every night, for all sorts of perfectly understandable reasons. So why the hell was he panicking! Every night wormed its way into his mind; Annabelle had said Jill left at lunchtime. Maybe Lambert would—O’Farrell started to think and then stopped, closing out the thought.

He went back to the kitchen and mixed another drink. He’d give her a little longer, another hour maybe. Then the police. Call other people at the clinic to see if she’d said anything to them. Who? O’Farrell squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember the names. Jill always seemed to be talking about people she worked with, so much so that he usually switched off, and now he couldn’t remember the names. There was a Mary, he thought. And an Anne. Or was that the same person, Maryanne? And what about surnames, to look them up in the book? They wouldn’t be at the clinic, not this late. The night staff would tell him, once he’d satisfied them who he was. Just another hour. Then he’d start calling around.

O’Farrell carried his drink with him to the front of the house, where he could look out onto the street. It was very quiet, fully dark now, all the parking spaces used up by returning residents without garages. There’d be the cars to clean over the weekend. O’Farrell looked forward to doing it; mundane, certainly, but familiar, secure by its very ordinariness.

Their garage door was electric, operated by an impulse from a control box in either vehicle, and it was the unlocking click and then the operational whir he heard, seconds before he saw Jill’s car. The inner door from the garage led into the kitchen, and O’Farrell was already there when Jill came through. She seemed taken aback to see him and said, “Where the hell have you been!”

“Where the hell have you been?” he said. In his concern he sounded angry, which he wasn’t.

“All the way out to Dulles is where I’ve been,” said Jill. “I decided on a surprise, so I went to meet the plane. And you weren’t on it, weren’t even booked, when I checked.”

O’Farrell reached out, pulling her to him, to gain time to think. And not just to think. He wanted to feel her, hold her close and know the reassurance of her being there. She’d always been there. Always would be. What would he do if Jill went out one morning and fired the ignition and literally exploded, simply didn’t exist anymore!

She broke away from him. “Darling!” she said. “You’re shaking! What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” he said, recovering. “Tired, that’s all. Would you believe it! I set out to surprise you!”

“What?”

“After I telephoned I realized I wasn’t going to need as much clearing-up time after all. I got to the airport in time for the TWA flight through New York, so I canceled the original reservation and switched. Got here two hours earlier.”

“You know what?” said Jill, smiling and believing him. “We must have passed each other on the way to and from the airport.”

O’Farrell hugged her again, anxious for the closeness. Mouth in her hair, against her ear, he said, “That’s what must have happened.” It hadn’t occurred to her to disbelieve, to doubt.

“You’re still shaking.”

“It isn’t anything. Tiredness, like I said. Plane was crowded; tour groups.”

Jill moved farther into the kitchen, perching on a breakfast stool. “I had another idea, after the first surprise,” she confessed. “If you’d felt like it, I was going to suggest dinner somewhere instead of coming straight home.”

She was dressed in her newest suit, the one she had picked up at a Saks sale. “Great idea!” he said.

She shook her head. “You’re tired.”

“Nothing a shower can’t fix in five minutes.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “We’re home now. I’ll make something here.”

O’Farrell didn’t want to disappoint her, but he thought it would be dangerous to press too hard. So much for the woman who never did anything unexpected! He said,

“Absolutely positive,” she said.

He didn’t think she was. Effusively he said, “Tomorrow night! Anywhere you like!” knowing it wouldn’t be the same, because there wouldn’t be any spontaneity.

“We’ll think about it,” she said.

It had to be a Lean Cuisine lasagna and she joined him in some wine, and O’Farrell gave the prepared account of what he was supposed to have done and seen in London. Telling her of his call to Ellen made the opening for Jill to talk of her time in Chicago while he had been away. Like O’Farrell, she wasn’t impressed with Patrick’s sudden responsibility. She put at three months the time it would take the man to lose the job or fail with the payments or possibly both. The drug scare at Billy’s school was so long ago they didn’t even talk about it anymore.

It was obvious Jill expected him to make love to her that night and he did, although it wasn’t easy and he had to fake it. He didn’t think she guessed and he was fairly sure she climaxed.

The following night they did go out, combining an orchestral recital at the Kennedy Center with dinner at the restaurant there, the river view making up for the food. The outing really did lack spontaneity, but Jill said it was wonderful. Abruptly O’Farrell said he really didn’t know what he’d do without her, and Jill laughed and said he’d never have to find out, would he?

O’Farrell tried hard for the normality he craved. He found a reference to his great-grandfather in a history of western American exploration to add to the collection and on the first Saturday cleaned the cars, disturbed at how dirty and neglected they had become. There was even a rust stain on the Ford.

The normality didn’t last long. The summons from Petty came the second week, a summons to Lafayette Square itself, which was unusual. When O’Farrell entered, he saw that Erickson wasn’t present, which was even more unusual, but he hoped he knew the reason. The air was thick with the incenselike smell from the perpetual pipe.

“Just wanted to see how you were,” Petty announced at once.

“I’m fine,” O’Farrell said. Thinking that sounded too short, he added, “Thank you.”

“How did you get on with Lambert?”

It was a professional question, and O’Farrell thought the psychologist could have answered that more satisfactorily than himself. “I appreciated the advice, the chance to talk. It was very helpful.” Everything was coming out very stilted. Why was Petty delaying?

“You expect an official inquiry?”

At last! O’Farrell said, “I would have thought it automatic.”

“It isn’t,” Petty said brusquely. “And there isn’t going to be one.”

“Nothing!” Lambert had made it possible for him to live with himself, to accept the accident and justify what he’d done in the past, but O’Farrell still believed what he had told the man, that the Agency would from now on consider him unreliable.

“The circumstances are obvious,” the section chief said. “Nothing happened to embarrass anybody. So it’s a closed matter. Over.”

O’Farrell’s thoughts were disordered, refusing to form, and it was several moments before he could speak. Finally, stilted still, he said, “What then, precisely, is my position?”

Petty frowned, as if the question were difficult. “Your position?”

“Am I considered to be still”—O’Farrell stopped, seeking the laughably absurd description Lambert had used—“considered to be on the active roster?”

Petty’s frown remained. “Of course. I thought I just made that clear.”

Once more there was a long pause, from O’Farrell. Then he said, “I see.”

“Something wrong?” Petty demanded.

“No … I … no, nothing.”

“What is it? You seem unsure.”

“Nothing,” O’Farrell reiterated. “Nothing at all.” A soldier, a lawman; that’s what Lambert had called him. That’s what he was.

That night Ellen telephoned from Chicago and asked them to come up at once.

Rivera had gone to Henrietta’s twice under escort and the sex had been sensational. He guessed he had been right, that she was stimulated by the thought of the guards being outside. The British detectives remained courteous and formally interviewed him again, admitting they weren’t making any progress and once more pressing him to suggest a reason for the attack. Once more he claimed it to be a mystery to him.

Rivera considered the very absence of any demand from Pierre Belac for final settlement of the arms deal a confirmation, if any confirmation were needed, of the man’s involvement in the bombing. Rivera was curious why the man hadn’t waited until after the last delivery, to get the last of the money.

The ambassador had changed his mind yet again about that final payment, forever conscious of the daily accruing interest. He wouldn’t settle automatically. With every passing day he became more convinced there was no physical risk. So he’d wait and give himself the satisfaction of making Belac ask.

Henrietta telephoned on his private line at the embassy at five, to check that tonight was still on, and Rivera said it was. He intended coming straight from High Holborn to collect her after the arrival of the daily communication from Havana. They were dining at the Gavroche.

“Will they be round us all the time, these bodyguards?” Henrietta demanded.

“All the time,” he guaranteed.

The diplomatic pouch was on time and Rivera sat staring down at the official Foreign-Ministry letter. In view of his outstanding ability, he was being considered for promotion to the central government. To that end he was to prepare himself to attend a forthcoming international conference.

TWENTY-SIX

O’FARRELL AND Jill caught the late-afternoon flight and from O’Hare telephoned the number Ellen had given them. She was still there. They drove straight over. It was obviously an official building, although no one wore uniforms and there was definitely no indication of any association with the police.

Ellen looked strained, which was understandable, but mere was no sign of crying. She was alone in an office with a man she introduced as McMasters; she apologized for not remembering the first name. The man said it was Peter. He stood politely to greet and to seat them, his attitude and expression sympathetic.

“Where’s Billy?” Jill demanded at once.

“He’s okay,” Ellen said. “He’s with a counselor.”

“How bad is it?” demanded O’Farrell.

“Bad.”

‘That’s an exaggeration, and it’s important not to exaggerate,” McMasters said gently. He was a naturally big man who gave the impression of fatness, which was misleading. The checked shirt clashed against the tweed of his suit; the tie hung abandoned from a coatrack but that didn’t coordinate, either. The man said, “Your daughter has been very sensible. Billy’s been arriving late at the after-school day-care center. And men she found money, a fair amount, hidden in his room. I don’t know if you were aware of it, but there seemed to be a drug problem at his school a while back. We left a hotline number, if any parent wanted to talk about anything—”

“Billy’s taking drugs!” Jill said, aghast.

“No,” the man said, quiet-voiced, reassuring.

“Worse,” Ellen said.

O’Farrell had expected his daughter to be crushed, despairing, but she wasn’t; she seemed to be tight, flush-faced with anger. She must have been here a long time, he reasoned. The despair and the helplessness would have come and gone a lot earlier.

“We don’t know that, either,” McMasters said, calmly. “Billy was picked up outside school this afternoon. He was carrying crack, in a sealed package. Quite a lot. And some loose, uncut cocaine.”

“Crack!” O’Farrell exploded.

“In his backpack,” McMasters confirmed. “Sealed, like I said. And cocaine.”

“But what…?” stumbled Jill.

“He says he didn’t know what it was,” Ellen broke in. ‘That some people asked him to take it to another man who gave him ten dollars for doing it. He’s done it before. That’s where the money I found in his room came from.”

“My vote is that he’s telling the truth,” McMasters said. “What he had was a street dealer’s stash; no way a user’s purchase. We’re talking big thousands; he’d have been stealing, not saving. And we’ve had a doctor check him out. There’s no evidence at all that he’s a user: no urine trace, no nasal irritation.”

“You’re not saying Billy’s a dealer!” Jill said. “He’s short of being nine years old, for Christ’s sake! That’s preposterous.”

“I don’t believe it is so preposterous,” said McMasters. “But no. I think Billy was a courier, an innocent but ideal courier.”

O’Farrell was trying to clear his head of all the easy reactions, the shock and outrage and the refusal to believe. He said. “Does that happen?”

“A lot,” said McMasters. “If a dealer’s been busted, he’s a face. From that first arrest we’ve got him marked and at any minute one of our people can come out of an unmarked car to see what he’s got in his shopping bag. And his supplier knows that best of all; needs to protect himself from association. So what’s better than getting some nice innocent kid to complete the run? Just a few blocks, that’s all; just sufficient to break the chain.”

“But a kid that young!” Jill protested.

“The younger the better,” McMasters said. “The supplier doesn’t go away; he stays around to see if the delivery is completed. He’s known for hours that we’ve got his stuff off Billy. Probably already replaced it by now, through some other child.”

“What’s going to happen to Billy?” O’Farrell asked, the bottom-line question he should have asked before.

“We need to know more at this stage,” McMasters said. “Billy’s the child of a single-parent family, he’s not yet nine years old, and he’s become associated with drug dealers. And innocent or not, he’s known something isn’t right, because he’s hidden the money he got for doing what he did.”

“You didn’t quite finish,” Ellen said.

O’Farrell looked briefly at his daughter and McMasters, and to the drugs officer he said, “What?”

“Billy won’t tell us about it, not properly. Just how much he got; nothing about the people.”

“He doesn’t know them!” Ellen pleaded. “How can he tell you what he doesn’t know. And you know anyway that wasn’t what I meant!”

“There’s got to be something more,” McMasters said. “We agreed on that before your parents came in.”

To O’Farrell, not to the investigating officer, Ellen said desperately, “They think I was involved, that Billy might have been carrying for me!”

“What!” O’Farrell said. He was too incredulous to be angry.

“I’ve asked your daughter to take a drug test,” McMasters announced flatly.

“No!” O’Farrell said. And then, in immediate contradiction, he said, “Yes! Why not! Prove that’s nonsense!”

Ellen hesitated for a moment, and O’Farrell felt the horrified flicker of doubt.

Then Ellen said, “Of course I will. I’ve already agreed.” She sat upright and strangely isolated, the unshed tears at last flooding from her. Jill reached out, pulling Ellen to her, and Ellen gratefully put her head on her mother’s shoulder. She made an obvious effort to stop crying but sobbed on, instead, dry, racking sobs.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Jill kept repeating, looking imploringly over their daughter’s slumped shoulders at O’Farrell, expecting him to do or say something.

To the other man, O’Farrell said, “Can I see him?”

“Yes,” Jill picked up eagerly. “We want to see him—”

“Alone,” O’Farrell finished.

Jill looked at him, stiff-faced, but didn’t protest.

“Sure,” McMasters agreed at once. “No reason why not.”

O’Farrell left the office slightly behind the other man, following him down the gleaming, buffered-clean corridors. Underfoot there had to be some rubberized material, because there was only a faint squeak of movement as they walked. In fact, this section of the building was very quiet, no sounds of people or telephones from other offices. They only passed two people, both of whom greeted McMasters by name and smiled at O’Farrell. They pushed through two firescreen doors and went halfway down a corridor to the right before McMasters halted outside a door set with wire-reinforced glass. McMasters said, “You should know the room is covered by video cameras and sound; really there for child sex and molestation cases.”

“I’ve read that it works,” O’Farrell said.

“Sometimes,” McMasters said.

It looked like a child’s playroom. There was an enormous tub of overflowing toys near a wall-mounted blackboard, upon which some stick figures paraded in a neatly chalked line. Beanbag seats were strewn around the floor and there were assorted desks and chairs, without any order. Billy was at one of the larger tables, head bent in concentration over a large sheet of paper on which he was crayoning something. A very young and pretty girl whom O’Farrell didn’t think could be long out of her teens was sitting opposite, providing the colors as Billy asked for them. Billy’s legs were too short to reach the floor; he’d tucked his feet around a cross support, halfway down. One of his laces was undone.

The girl rose from the table, shaking her head at McMasters in an obvious signal that Billy had disclosed nothing.

“Hi, Gramps!” Billy said with forced bravery. “Come and see what I’ve drawn!”

“Why don’t we take a coffee break?” McMasters suggested to the girl. She smiled her way from the room ahead of the man, without any introduction.

O’Farrell stood slightly behind the child, gazing down at a spill of colors vaguely resembling some humanoid shape. There was a lot of body armor, something he guessed to be a ray gun and a spaceship, in the background. “It’s great,” O’Farrell said. “What is it?”

“A Zirton.”

“What’s a Zirton?”

“A space warrior. I just made him up.”

“A good guy or a bad guy?”

“Not sure,” the child said, head to one side. “A good guy, I guess …” He pointed to the chest armor. “That’s red. Red’s a good color, not a bad one.”

O’Farrell took the chair vacated by the girl. “So what happened here, then?”

Billy bent over his drawing, to avoid O’Farrell’s eyes. “Some men looked through my backpack and found a package. They brought me here.”

The history of the world, written on a postage stamp, O’Farrell thought. “That’s it. huh?”

“Guess so.”

“You know what was in the package?”

“Nope.” The denial was immediate.

“Didn’t you want to know?”

“Not really.”

“What if it had been something nasty? Mushy? Had leaked out all over the place?”

“Knew it wouldn’t.” There was a lift and then a drop of Billy’s head, bottom lip between his teeth at being caught.

“How could you tell, if you didn’t know what was inside?”

“Hadn’t leaked out before.”

“There’d been other packages, then?”

It was becoming difficult for Billy to find anything more to do to his picture. He nodded his head and said, “Uh-huh.”

“How many?”

“One or two.”

“Let’s do better than that, shall we?”

“Can’t remember.”

“You’ve got to remember, Billy. I want you to.”

“Five,” the child mumbled.

“You quite sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No more?”

Billy shook his head.

“How did it start, the first time?”

“I dunno.”

“ ’Course you do, Billy. That’s silly, to say you don’t know.”

“A man came up to me one day, before the school bus came. Asked me to run an errand. Said I’d get money for it.”

“Didn’t you wonder if you should do it?”

“It wasn’t to get into his car or anything. Mommy told me not to do that.”

“What did he want you to do then?”

“Just put the package in my backpack, that’s all. He said when I got off, I was to wait for a man to come up and say did I have a present for him? When I gave it to him, he would give me ten dollars.”

O’Farrell felt hot, his collar restrictively tight, at how exposed Billy had been. An image came into his mind that he didn’t recognize at first and then he did: it was a boy eating dinner in an exclusive London restaurant with his beautiful mother and ambassador father. O’Farrell blinked it away. He said, “Is that how it happened, all five times?”

“Kind of,” Billy said. “Sometimes I had to wait around.”

“But you always did?”

“Sure, always.”

“They must have liked that, knowing you were reliable, a good guy.”

“They did!” Billy said, smiling up, proud again.

“You become friends?”

“Kind of.”

“What did they call you? They call you Billy or maybe something else? Just kid or something?”

“Always Bill, after that first time,” the boy said, still proud. “Sometimes Billy-boy.”

“What did you call them?”

“I used—” The boy stopped and his face closed, as if a curtain had been drawn across ii.

“What, Billy?”

“Nothing.”

“You were telling me what you called them.”

“Didn’t call them anything. Never knew their names.”

O’Farrell turned Billy’s drawing around so that he could see it better. “What’s that again?”

“A Zirton,” the boy said. He was cautious now against relaxing at an apparently casual question.

“They make Zirtons in those things I bought you, a few months back?”

“I just told you. I made it up.”

“So you did,” O’Farrell said easily. “That was a good weekend, wasn’t it?”

“It was okay,” Billy said stubbornly.

“I enjoyed that hamburger and fries we had, near the lake,” O’Farrell said. “You remember what we talked about then?”

“Yes.” Billy said, unexpectedly direct.

“And the promise you made me?”

“Yes.”

At last the child’s lips were trembling, the first sign of giving way. O’Farrell was surprised Billy had held out so long and thought his grandson was a plucky little bastard. Just as he thought of himself as a shit, for coming down on him like this, and hoped it would all be worthwhile. Relentlessly he went on, “I don’t think you’ve kept it, Billy. I thought we were friends, loved each other, but I don’t think you’ve kept your promise.”

“You said I was to tell Miss James or Mommy if anyone tried to sell me drugs at school,” Billy said.

It was a lawyer’s escape and bloody good for a kid so young. O’Farrell said, “You knew what was in those packages, didn’t you, Billy?”

“No!”

“Or didn’t you want to know?” O’Farrell asked, changing direction with the idea. “Was that it? You thought you were safer if you pretended not to know what was in them? Even though you did, all the time.”

Billy couldn’t hold his grandfather’s eyes. He looked down into his lap and O’Farrell thought the tears were going to come then, but still they didn’t. “I didn’t know,” the boy mumbled.

“It was cocaine, Billy. That stuff that makes you feel funny, the stuff we talked about. And crack is cocaine in crystals, which is even worse.”

The boy shrugged, saying nothing.

“You do know some names, don’t you?” O’Farrell persisted. “Not all, not even complete. But you know some.”

“Can’t.”

The word was so quiet that O’Farrell feared he’d misheard. “What? What did you say?”

“Can’t,” Billy repeated.

“Why can’t you?”

“Frightened.”

“You mustn’t be frightened,” O’Farrell urged. “People will look after you. I’ll look after you. It’ll be all right.”

The tears came as abruptly as Ellen’s had earlier. Billy suddenly sobbed and fell forward on his arms and O’Farrell sat in helpless indecision, wanting to go around the table and hold him and stop the tears but pulling back against halting the outburst with kindness before it all came out. He compromised, reaching across for Billy’s outstretched arms and stroking his hand. It was a long time before Billy looked up, and when he did, his eyes were red-rimmed and his nose was running. O’Farrell gave him a handkerchief and Billy wiped himself. His mouth moved, unsurely forming the words. At last, broken-voiced, he said, “I’ve kept it all. The money I mean.”

“I heard,” O’Farrell said, still anxious not to block the flow.

“It would have been sixty dollars, today.”

So at ten dollars a delivery, he hadn’t lied about the five previous deliveries. “Yes,” O’Farrell said.

“Wanted a hundred,” Billy said. “There’s three months, to Mom’s birthday, so I guess I would have gotten it easily. She hasn’t had anything new, not for a long time. I was going to give it to her on her birthday so she could have something new. Hadn’t worked out a way to say how I’d gotten it, but I’d have thought of something, by the time. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. Honest.”

“I know that,” O’Farrell said thickly. “We’ll find something for Mommy, you and me, for her birthday. Okay?”

“Okay,” the boy said.

“They’re not your friends, Billy. Not these guys for whom you’ve been carrying packages.”

“I know that, really. They pretended to be, but when they said about Mom, I knew they weren’t.”

O’Farrell went from hot to cold. “What did they say about Mom?”

“That they knew where we lived and that they’d make her ugly—like me, said Rick; he’s got a big scar right over his nose—if I told her what I was doing, if I told anyone what I was doing. If I got caught, I was to say it was just an errand and that I didn’t know what it was and there was nothing wrong. That I wouldn’t get into trouble.”

“Was Rick the guy who took die stuff when you got off or who gave it to you near die school?” coaxed O’Farrell.

“He gave it to me, showed me first time how to put it in my backpack.”

“By himself?”

“No, he—” Billy stopped, looking pebble-eyed at his grandfather.

O’Farrell held the child’s hands tightly across the table, to reinforce what he said. “He can’t hurt you; none of them can hurt you now. I won’t let them.”

“They said.”

“They were trying to sound big. Important. It wasn’t true.”

The child stared across the table, his mouth a tight line, and O’Farrell could feel the fear shaking through him. “Have I ever told you something that wasn’t right? Wasn’t true?”

It was still some time before the boy spoke. “Guess not,” he said.

“So trust me now, Billy.”

“Felipe,” blurted the boy, looking down into his lap again, as if he were ashamed. “There was a man called Felipe. Sometimes he stayed in the car.”

“Was it a big car?” O’Farrell asked, imagining a block-long Cadillac with chrome and fins.

“Like Mom’s,” Billy said. “Gray too.”

“Just Rick and Felipe? Never anyone else?”

Billy shook his head.

“You ever hear their other names?”

The headshake came again.

“Remember anything else about them?”

The third headshake began and then, an afterthought, Billy said, “There was a ring.…” He extended his left hand, isolating the index finger. “Here, like a big bird. It was black and had its wings out. Rick said he might give it to me one day.”

“What about the man you gave the stuff to? He have a name?

“Boxer,” said Billy, not hesitant anymore, actually smiling in recollection. “Had a nose all squashy, like a boxer’s. He was different from the others. He was funny. Said that’s what he was doing when he was late sometimes, playing hide-and-seek.”

He probably would have been, literally, O’Farrell decided, watching from some vantage point to ensure Billy wasn’t under observation and that it was safe to make the pickup. “He have a car?”

“A bike!” Billy said enthusiastically. “A racing bike with lots of gears and drop handlebars. Blue. He let me touch it once.”

O’Farrell recalled that a lot of the houses in Evanston were unfeiuxu; a bicycie, capable of cutting through backyards from house to house and street to street, was a better vehicle than a car in many pursuits. “You never called him anything else but Boxer?”

“Nope.”

“What sort of person was he? He have any rings or stuff like that?” O’Farrell felt exhausted; damp from perspiration and aching in his shoulders and legs.

“He wasn’t American,” Billy said flatly. “Neither was Felipe. It wasn’t the same as us when they talked. And Boxer had a picture on his hand.”

“Whereabouts?” O’Farrell pressed.

Billy offered his left hand, the middle finger outstretched. He pointed near the knuckle and said, “A flower, just there. Red.”

It was enough. O’Farrell decided; it had to be enough. If he were exhausted, how must Billy be feeling? He said, “You’ve been very good.”

“You pleased?” The child smiled uncertainly, eager for die praise.

“Very pleased,” O’Farrell said.

“Can we go home now? I don’t want to stay here anymore. I don’t like it here anymore.”

“I’ll see,” O’Farrell said.

McMasters and the girl were waiting directly outside the door. O’Farrell closed it carefully and started, “Okay, the suppliers …” but McMasters raised his hand, stopping him. “I watched it live, in the control room. You did damned well.”

O’Farrell was impatient with the praise but didn’t show it. He said, “He wants to go home.”

“I heard that, too.”

“So what about it?”

“It can’t end just like this.”

“But can he go home, now!”

“I think he needs to,” McMasters agreed. “And whatever happens, I think he’s going to want help from a child psychiatrist. He’s one scared kid.”

“What about the descriptions? Enough for any identifications?”

McMasters studied him curiously and then said, “Not yet; there’s a lot of work to be done.”

O’Farrell was caught by the tone of McMasters’s voice, just as the other man had recognized the meaning in his. O’Farrell said, “And if you had an identification, you wouldn’t tell me?”

“Personal vengeance and vigilante stuff are for the movies, Mr. O’Farrell.”

It’s as good a description as any for what I do, for Christ’s sake! O’Farrell thought. He said, “I didn’t mean anything like that.”

“My mistake,” McMasters said, clearly not believing it was.

O’Farrell collected Billy, and then Jill and Ellen, and they rode home strangely embarrassed, no one able to find any conversation. O’Farrell tried baseball talk, but Billy didn’t respond. In the apartment there were the sleeping arrangements to make, moving the bedding, which gave them some activity, and at dinner O’Farrell decided to get the clouds out of the way. He did so entirely to and for Billy’s benefit, openly talking about drugs and the child’s part in what had happened but making it sound as if Billy had knowingly acted like some undercover agent, exaggerating McMasters’s reaction to the information the boy had finally provided. Ellen and Jill caught on to what O’Farrell was doing and openly praised the boy, and Billy started to relax, even smiling occasionally. O’Farrell was intent on everything the boy said, for any scrap of additional information, but there was nothing.

O’Farrell was ready for the going-to-bed request, agreeing at once that he should be the one to take Billy, and Ellen behaved like it was the expected thing. The story was predictably about some galactic exploration but Billy clearly wasn’t interested.

“They won’t come, Rick and Felipe, during the night!”

“No.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I’m just sure.”

“How long are you staying?”

“A few days.”

“Who’s going to look after us when you’ve gone?”

“I’ll work it out.”

Billy insisted on holding O’Farrell’s hand between both of his and several times opened his eyes, accusingly, when O’Farrell tried gently to withdraw. It was an hour before O’Farrell got away. The dinner things were cleared and Jill and Ellen were sitting side by side on the couch, like hospital visitors waiting for a diagnosis they didn’t want to hear. O’Farrell told them everything, and Ellen began to cry when he got to the reason for Billy saving the money, the threats that the men had made, and McMasters’s thought that Billy might benefit from seeing a psychiatrist.

“Well?” O’Farrell demanded.

Ellen looked uncomprehendingly up at him, red-nosed and wet-faced. “Well what?”

“I want direct, honest answers.”

“About what?”

“About a lot of things. Let’s try drugs first.’”

Her lips quivered afresh but Ellen didn’t break down. “No!” she said. “How many times have I got to say no!”

“Until I’m satisfied,” O’Farrell said.

Ellen opened her mouth to speak but then apparently changed her mind about what she was going to say. She said, very quietly, “No. I don’t do cocaine! No, I don’t do crack! No, I don’t deal. No, I haven’t turned my son into a runner! There! Satisfied?” It was very difficult for her to hold on and Jill reached out to her as she had in McMasterss office, in support.

“What about the day-care center?” O’Farrell persisted relentlessly.

“You knew about that!” Ellen said defensively. “Thousands of single parents use the system. It works. Don’t look at me as if I’ve done something wrong!”

“How long has he been there by the time you collect him?”

“Usual time.”

“What’s usual time?”

“I told you about the extra work, when we had the first scare at the school,” Ellen said. “Billy was always okay at the center until I collected him.”

Jill pulled away from their daughter. “It took them long enough to realize he was arriving late.”

“But they did realize it,” Ellen said. “And as soon as they did, they told me.”

“How about another direct, honest answer?” O’Farrell challenged. “Tell me, directly and honestly, how much Patrick’s caught up with the payment arrears. And how promptly the regular amounts have come in?”

Ellen gave a helpless shrug. “He promised,” she said.

“He hasn’t paid up a goddamned cent, has he!” O’Farrell said.

Ellen shook her head, not looking up at her father.

“For God’s sake!” Jill said, finding something at last to be angry instead of sad about. “What’s wrong with you! You’re working full-time and extra when you can—and you let him get away with this?”

“That’s going to stop, right here and now!” O’Farrell said. “I’m going to sort everything out with Billy and I’m going to sort everything out with that bastard ex-husband of yours.…” He stopped, caught by a sudden thought and remembering Billy’s bedroom pleas. He said, “You called Patrick, about the drugs business?”

Ellen nodded. “Before you. He said he had some important appointments running through until well into the evening, that he’d get over if he could. I guess he couldn’t. This new job is pretty demanding … worrying.…”

“I just can’t believe this! I just can’t believe I’m hearing this—” Jill Mailed to protest, but O’Farrell took over, careless of interrupting his wife and careless, too, of the fury he was supposed never to feel.

“Billy was pretty worried today, too, holding my hand and pleading not to be hurt. You’re more than a damned fool. Don’t you realize you’ve actually neglected Billy, letting Patrick off the hook like you have?”

There was a listless shoulder movement from their daughter. “I guess,” she said.

O’Farrell was gripped by a feeling of helplessness, helplessness and impotence. Abruptly he -stood and announced, “I’m going out for a while. A walk.”

“But …” Jill started.

“I need to get out.”

There was a chill coming off the lake and O’Farrell set out toward it, knowing there was a lakeside walk through a park but thinking after two blocks that in the darkness he didn’t know how to find it. He turned back toward the township, knowing he could really have found the park if he’d wanted, knowing, too, why he’d changed his mind. Evanston wasn’t big; sprawled awkwardly, with a mall he knew he couldn’t reach tonight on foot, but definitely not big. Boxer was an identifiable enough name, if it were how the man was normally known. Foreign accent and a broken nose and a red-flower tattoo on his left hand. And a racing bicycle, although O’Farrell guessed that was reserved for pickups, not nighttime cruising. Sufficient to go on: to look at least.

O’Farrell reached the main highway, running parallel with the railway line, and began to walk its full length, taking in the side roads when he came to them. At restaurants he checked through windows, on the pretext of reading the menus, and he went into every bar he came to, for the first time in months using a drink to justify his presence rather than because he needed it. Drink in hand, he walked around them all, looking, and at one tavern—one of the ones he thought most likely because there was live music and everyone was young, far younger than himself—there were some sniggers and someone behind the bar asked if he needed any help. O’Farrell chanced asking for a man called Boxer and got headshaking blank-ness in reply.

What in the name of Christ did he imagine he was doing! The question came in a bar just beyond the railway bridge over the Chicago road, a shabby place where the regulars examined him like the intruder he was, resenting his examination of them. What would he have done if there’d been someone here—or anywhere else—matching Billy’s description? The tattoo was pretty distinctive but not unique, and the broken nose certainly wasn’t. Was it enough evidence to justify killing a man, which is what he’d set out to do? What about the usual, professional criteria? Personal vengeance and vigilante stuff are for the movies. Was that what he would have done, dragged the man into some darkened parking lot and beat a confession from him, just like they did in the movies? And then killed him? Killed someone? Hadn’t that been the agony, over the last few months, not wanting to kill anyone? Hadn’t that been what he’d told Lambert? The demands flurried like snow through his mind and like snow blocked up, so that he couldn’t separate question from answer and more often couldn’t find answers to the questions.

O’Farrell left his drink and hurried from the bar, as if he had something to be guilty about, which he supposed he had in thought if not actually in deed. The apartment was in darkness when he got back. He groped his way through it without putting on the light, not wanting to awaken anyone. He undressed in the dark, but as he was lowering himself cautiously beside Jill, she said, “I’m not asleep.”

“I didn’t mean to be so long.”

“Did you find him, the supplier who got Billy to carry the stuff?”

“No.” O’Farrell detected the movement and then Jill’s hand took his.

“Would you have tried to kill him, if you’d found him?”

“I wanted to,” O’Farrell said.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Jill said. “These people are very vicious. You’d have probably gotten hurt yourself.”

It was the nearest she’d come openly to questioning his manhood. She wouldn’t have believed him capable, of course.

TWENTY-SEVEN

RIVERA DECIDED it was time he emerged from his period of mourning. He accepted that there were some who might consider it premature but he was unconcerned; he was an ambassador, a public servant and such people were expected to cope with grief better than ordinary people. Conversely there were others who might consider him brave, trying to rebuild something of an existence after the shattering experience.

Objectively Rivera recognized that he had taken a chance going to the Gavroche with Henrietta so soon after it happened, but they’d gotten away with it; there had been no recognition and therefore no resulting newspaper comment.

Tonight was different. A thoroughly acceptable public-affair: how better to emerge gently from a period of grief than at a charity premiere at Covent Garden? Then a diplomatic function or two, more public appearances. Followed by the acceptance of some private social invitations to which he’d delayed replying.

From his customary vantage point Rivera saw the arrival of the diplomatic delivery and turned back into the room to receive it, hoping after the care with which he had planned the evening that no personal communication would delay him. He was at once alarmed by the size of the wallet but just as quickly relaxed: the Foreign-Ministry material could as easily have been enclosed in the general pouch to be processed first by secretaries. It was all the accreditation and documentation for the international assignment of which the Foreign Ministry had already advised him in the promised letter, a conference in Madrid to reinforce trade links with Latin America, despite Spain’s presence within the European Community.

There was nothing else, so he was actually ahead of time now, because the arrangement was for him to go direct to the opera house from High Holborn. Idly Rivera flicked through the instructions. There was a general policy document to guide him, from Havana, and two other, more detailed guidance papers from the Trade Ministry. Arrangements had been made for him to stay at the official residence of the ambassador to Spain, whom he remembered as a tiresome man constantly boasting of a close friendship the Che Guevara that only he seemed able to remember. Rivera was expected two days before the commencement of the conference and particularly to attend every official Spanish ceremony, because Cuba wanted to strengthen its ties with the Spanish-speaking country that formed part of Europe.

Rivera descended to his new car and his escorts, nodding absentmindedly at the assembled men, his mind remaining occupied by what he’d just read.

He’d go to the conference, of course, but certainly not allow the promotional recall to progress any further. Now was an excellent moment to announce his diplomatic resignation, in fact, with Estelle’s death providing a fortunate coincidence. He could plead that he was distraught by her loss, unable from the shock of being the intended victim to function as he properly should, how they would expect him to function. Quit with sympathy and understanding. And then Paris! Vibrant, sophisticated Paris. It was all simple and straightforward but for one thing. Henrietta. He didn’t want to be without her, wouldn’t be without her. It was time to talk it all through with her. There were things she would have to sort out and settle. The divorce, for instance.

Rivera’s performance at Covent Garden was equal to any upon the stage. The assassination had made him a recognizable figure and there was a burst of flashbulbs as he left his vehicle, the picture made dramatic by the escorts grouped around him. He remained grave-faced, head bowed, bypassing the champagne gathering to go directly to his reserved box. There he chose a rear seat, in shadow from the rest of the theater. He withdrew even further with the arrival of the others in the party, shaking hands with the men who offered pleasantries and holding back when Henrietta positioned her face to be kissed.

The production of The Barber of Seville was not as good as Rivera had hoped, and the tavern scene was particularly disappointing, people shouting at each other rather than singing. There was champagne arranged for the break, of course, but again Rivera declined. Henrietta held back briefly, accusing him of taking things too far, and flouncing off when he still refused to accompany her.

The dinner party afterward was at the Dorchester. Briefly Rivera thought of avoiding it, and when he got to the hotel he came close to wishing he had. Henrietta clung to him, holding his arm and sharing every conversation, and Rivera recognized the retribution for his earlier distancing himself from her. The seating plan put him next to her—because Henrietta had arranged it that way—and she sat with her hands obviously beneath the table, blatantly straying across to his thigh and crotch.

He complained, when they were finally alone in the car with the glass screen raised between themselves and the driver. Henrietta said, “For Christ’s sake, darling, don’t be such a boring bloody hypocrite! There’s not one person at that table tonight who doesn’t know we’ve been screwing each other for ages.”

Henrietta was right, and it upset him to concede it. He said, “It wouldn’t hurt to be a little less obvious for a couple more weeks.”

She put her hand in his lap and he moved to make it easier and she said, “You’re not worried about propriety now!”

“We’re not in front of a hundred people in a hotel dining room now.”

Henrietta twisted to look out of the rear window at one of the escort cars. “Do they carry guns?”

“Some,” Rivera admitted. “They’re not supposed to, under diplomatic convention, but they do.”

“How long will it last? Will you always have to be guarded as closely as this?”

“For a long time, I suppose,” Rivera said, believing he was stimulating her excitement.

“Even when you’re transferred somewhere else?”

It was an opening to start talking about Paris, but Rivera held back, deciding the rear of a car was not the right place. He said, “I would imagine so: I haven’t really thought about it.”

“I would think it’s all right for a while but not all the time: too claustrophobic,” Henrietta said, discarding a novelty.

“I don’t want it to go on forever.” The chauffeur was a member of the GDI, like all his other Cuban protectors. Rivera hoped the vehicle was not equipped with the listening devices that spies were supposed to utilize. He was sure that everything he’d said so far was innocuous enough.

At Pimlico, Rivera followed her familiarly into the house and on to the drawing room, which was on the first floor with veranda windows overlooking the illuminated patio at the rear.

“I’ll have brandy,” she ordered, flopping onto a love seat.

There were times, like now, when Henrietta could be profoundly irritating, treating him like a servant whose name she didn’t even know. Rivera was sure he’d correct the attitude quickly enough, although Henrietta was strong-willed to the point of willfulness, far stronger than Estelle had been. There was still so much each had to learn about the other. Rivera was very sure about one thing. With Henrietta as his wife, he wouldn’t consider a mistress; he’d never need to consider a mistress.

Rivera was uncertain, oddly shy, about breaking the news of Paris “I’ve got some news,” he set out. “I’m going away soon.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. She seemed suddenly occupied with a pulled thread on the seam of her dress.

Was that the best reaction she could manage? He said, “Spain. I am to be an observer at an international conference.” Rivera thought, discomfited, that he sounded like a child hopefully boasting a better holiday destination than anybody else in the class.

Henrietta seemed to treat it as such. She said, “I don’t like Spain. I always feel nauseous there; something to do with the oil they cook with, I suppose. I much prefer France.”

The opening hung before him, beckoning. He said, “So do I. In fact I’ve been thinking about France quite a lot, lately.”

Henrietta frowned across the room at him. “Thinking about France?”

It had been an awkward way to express himself, Rivera realized. “I want Jorge at the Sorbonne eventually. It would be convenient to live in Paris, better perhaps for the remainder of his preliminary education to be there.”

“How could that work, with your embassy being here?” asked Henrietta, still confused.

“I’m going to resign,” Rivera announced.

“You’re going to do what!” She came forward on her seat, wide-eyed.

“Quit,” he said, enjoying the sound of the declaration.

“Give it all up, just like that!”

“There’s not actually a lot to give up, compared to a return to Havana,” Rivera said. ‘That appears the alternative.”

“But what are you going to do in Paris!”

“Nothing,” Rivera said. “Just sit back and enjoy myself.”

“When?” she demanded.

So far her reaction had not been quite what he’d expected. He said, “I haven’t worked out definite dates. But soon; quite soon.”

“Oh,” Henrietta said.

The tone was empty, and small though it was, it amounted to the first sound of sadness. Rivera said, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“You don’t sound very upset.”

Henrietta offered her glass to be refilled. “Give me a chance, darling! It’s something I never expected. I thought we’d go on … oh, I don’t know … I mean. I didn’t imagine it ending.”

“Has it got to end?”

Henrietta looked steadily at him over the top of the glass he returned to her, then smiled coquettishly. “No reason at all!” she agreed brightly. “Paris is only an hour away by plane, after all!”

“I wasn’t thinking of your commuting.”

The smile went but the direct look remained. “I’m not going to guess what that means,” she said. “I’m going to sit here and listen to you tell me.”

“I want you to come to Paris with me.” Rivera blurted finally. He’d not meant it to be as clumsy as this; he was stumbling about like an awkward schoolboy.

For a long time Henrietta remained staring at him, as if she expected him to say mote. When he didn’t, she looked away, around the room, as if she were inspecting what he was suggesting she give up. “Divorce William? Marry you, d’you mean?”

“Yes.”

She sniggered, at once clamping her mouth shut, her free hand to her face. “Oh darling!” she said. “Oh my darling!”

The word was right but the tone was wrong; it was more sympathetic than loving. “What?” he said.

“We don’t marry, people like you and me. Not each other. We marry other, nice people. And cheat on our wedding night, because it’s fun. I couldn’t marry you! I’d never be able to trust you and you’d never be able to trust me. It would be a disaster. What goes on here—or doesn’t go on—between William and me is unimportant, to both of us. I’ve got respect as his wife. I get invited to Downing Street to dine with the prime minister … to Buckingham Palace. You’re asking me to abandon all that…!”

Rivera regarded her with astonishment for a few unguarded moments and then hopefully concealed it. He’d never imagined, ever, that Henrietta would reject him! It was inconceivable; it still was, despite her arrogant, spoiled words. Every consideration had always been when, not if. Rivera felt foolish, abjectly foolish; he recalled her giggled outburst—Oh darling, oh my darling—and realized she had been laughing at him. Actually laughing! At him, José Gaviria Rivera! As she must have laughed before, when he didn’t know she was doing so. Those at the dinner table tonight had doubtless laughed at him, knowing his function. A gigolo. He would have been perfect for the jokes, ideally qualified according to the tradition. A Latin, tango-dancing gigolo. Had she seen his brief, honest reaction to her dismissal? He hoped not—worried now about later jokes, among her friends—but it was too late. Only one thing mattered now. Getting out with as much dignity as possible. He tried an uncaring laugh, not sure if he fully succeeded, and said, “Of course I’m not asking you to abandon all that, not if it’s important. I just thought I’d give you the chance.…” Striving for lightness, he added, “It might have been a different sort of fun, for a while.”

“That’s just it, my darling: for a while. But where would we go from there?”

You could go to a whorehouse, where you’re naturally suited, thought Rivera. He didn’t try to laugh again but he smiled and said, “But you’re right; Paris is only an hour away.” It wouldn’t be much of a victory, but he was trying to grab what he could and he’d enjoy turning her down when she suggested coming. And she would call, he knew. Flying to Paris for an assignation would be exciting to Henrietta—fun, like traveling with armed bodyguards.

In immediate confirmation Henrietta said, “I’d like that! And we’ll have all the time in the world, won’t we?”

Where was his dignified exit line? “Nothing to do except have fun!” he said. The bitch, he thought, in a fresh flush of rage, treating him like a gigolo!

“On the subject of fun,” said Henrietta, coquettish again. “Is this a late-night-drinks party or do we fuck?”

This was the moment, Rivera thought, the moment to dismiss her and haughtily walk out. And then he paused. That would be turned into another joke, if he did. The poor darling was so crushed that he scuttled away with his tail—or maybe it was his prick—between his legs. He hoped she’d realize later he’d treated her like the whore she was, for that one last time. “We fuck,” he said.

The City of Athens, upon which the tanks and the Stinger missiles had supposedly been loaded in San Diego, together with acceptable End-User Certificates naming France as their destination, was a rusting, engine-strained hulk of a freighter chartered by Belac because it was cheap and because he had gained $40,000 on the budgeted transportation costs. A day after sailing, one of the turbines failed, and the freighter put into Manzillo for makeshift repairs. It was there that the master received the expected instructions from Havana, rerouting the tanks direct to Angola. By return, the captain advised Havana of his engine troubles and warned of a delay.

It took a further four days for the City of Athens to cover the comparatively short distance to Balboa, almost at the mouth of the Panama Canal, and there the engines failed again. This time Havana cabled that the City of Athens should not attempt the Atlantic voyage.

It should make for Cuba.

A message advising Rivera of the unexpected detour was sent that night from Havana.