O'Farrell's Law

ONE

EVEN IN the guaranteed security of his Alexandria home, it was instinctive, far beyond any training, for Charles O’Farrell to awaken as he did: eyes closed, breathing deeply as if he were still asleep, listening first. Always essential to listen first, to be sure. Around him the house remained early-morning quiet, the only sound the soft, bubbled breathing of Jill, still genuinely slumbering beside him. Safe then. O’Farrell opened his eyes but did not move his head. It wasn’t necessary for the initial ritual.

The bedroom cabinet with the photograph was directly in his line of sight. Except when he was on sudden overseas assignments, when it would have been unthinkable to risk such a prized possession, the photograph was invariably O’Farrell’s first sight in this unmoving, safety-checking moment of awakening. Just as at night, usually while Jill was making dinner, he went to the den to look over the cracked and yellowing newspaper cuttings of the archive he was creating. With just one martini, of course, the one a day he allowed himself. Well, normally just one. Sometimes two. Rarely more.

The way the newsprint was deteriorating worried him, like the fading of the photograph from brown sepia into pale pink worried him. It would be easy enough to get the cuttings copied, although a lot of the special feeling—the impression, somehow, of being there—would go if they were transferred onto sterile, hard, modern paper. Essential that he do it, though, if he were to preserve what he had so far managed to assemble. He’d need advice on how to save the picture. Copied again, he supposed. O’Farrell was even more reluctant to do that: there would definitely be a loss of atmosphere if the treasured image were transferred to some glossy, up-to-the-minute print.

There was no detail in that stiffly posed souvenir of frontier America that O’Farrell did not know intimately, could not have traced, if he’d wanted to, with his eyes shut. Sometimes, on those foreign assignments, that was precisely how O’Farrell did conjure into his mind the picture of his great-grandfather, allowing his imagination to soften the sharp outlines, even fantasizing the squeak of ungreased wagon wheels and the snorts of impatient horses and—only very occasionally—the snap of a shot.

O’Farrell knew there would have been such snapping echoes (why did a pistol shot never sound the way it was supposed to sound, always an inconsequential pop instead of a life-taking blast?) because the cuttings from the Scott City journal that at the moment formed the basis of his archive recorded six shoot-outs from which the man had emerged the victor. There would have been much more shooting, of course; the six had been reported because people had died, but O’Farrell knew there would have been other confrontations. Had to have been. Law was rare and resented in Kansas then, and anyone attempting to enforce it was more likely to be challenged than to be obeyed.

Objectively, the aged photograph hardly showed a man to be obeyed. There was nothing in the background of the photographic studio to provide a proper comparison, but the man appeared to be quite short—maybe just a little shorter than O’Farrell himself—and slightly built, like O’Farrell again. The stature was accentuated in the picture by the long-barreled Colt. It was holstered high and tight against his great-grandfather’s waist, a necessary tool of his trade, not low-slung and thonged from the bottom around his leg, like those in preposterous Hollywood portrayals. Properly carried, as it was in the photograph, it appeared altogether too. large and heavily out of proportion. But for the gun, it would have been impossible to guess what job the man held. He’d obviously dressed for the portrait: the trousers of his waistcoated, high-buttoned suit worn over his boots, tie tightly knotted into a hard-starched collar, hat squarely, almost comically perched on his head. Why, wondered O’Farrell, hadn’t his great-grandfather worn his marshal’s badge? It was a recurring question that O’Farrell had never resolved. He doubted his late father’s suggestion that it had been a retirement photograph. Currently the last of the fragile cuttings, an obituary of his great-grandfather’s peaceful death—in bed—at the age of seventy-six, also reported his quitting as a lawman when he was sixty. And he certainly didn’t look sixty in the photograph; somewhere between forty-five and fifty. Maybe forty-six. My age, thought O’Farrell; he liked to think so. Personal comparisons were very important.

O’Farrell moved at last, turning away from the bedside cabinet to look at Jill. She shifted slightly with his movement but didn’t awake. A skein of hair, hairdresser-blonded now because of the hint of grayness, strayed across her forehead. Very gently O’Farrell reached out to push it back, but paused with his hand in front of himself. No shake, he saw, gratefully. Well, hardly; no more than the minimal twitch to be expected from his lying in such an awkward position; wouldn’t be there at all when he got up. Continuing the gesture, O’Farrell succeeded in rearranging his wife’s hair without disturbing her. Worrying over nothing, he told himself. Which was the problem. Why was this feeling of uncertainly constantly with him? And growing?

He eased cautiously from the bed, wanting Jill to sleep on, but hesitated before the cabinet. It was definitely impossible without the gun to imagine his ancestor as a law man. Even more difficult to believe him to have been someone to be obeyed. Or capable of shooting another man. But then it was never possible to judge from appearances whether one man could kill another.

Charles O’Farrell knew that better than most.

Until the official opening by President Kennedy in 1961 of its headquarters at Langley, just off the Washington Memorial Parkway, America’s Central Intelligence Agency was housed piecemeal at 2430 E Street NW, in barracks alongside the Reflecting Pool and in wooden buildings behind the Heurich Brewery. Not everything was brought conveniently to one location by that 1961 presidential ceremony, however.

The security needs of the Agency’s most secret divisions actually dictated that they should remain outside its identifiable headquarters, and its most secret division of all was kept in Washington, on two floors of an office building just off Lafayette Park, to maintain a physical distance between the CIA, a recognized agency of the U.S. government, and a part of that agency determinedly unrecognized. Its existence was known only to a very few men. Required under oath to admit that the Agency possessed such a facility—at congressional inquiries, like those, for instance, that shattered the morale of the CIA in the mid-1970s—those men would have lied, careless of perjury, because their questioners were insufficiently cleared at the required level to receive such intelligence. The division, created after those mid-seventies congressional embarrassments, fit the phrase that became public during those hearings. It was “plausible deniability.”

The division came under the hidden authority of the CIA’s Plans Directorate. It was run by two men who worked on completely equal terms, although George Petty was accorded the title of director, with Donald Erickson defined as deputy. Each was a third-generation American who believed implicitly in the correctness and the morality of what they did, an essential mental attitude for every constantly monitored employee.

“It’s O’Farrell’s medical today,” Erickson said. He was a tall, spare man with hair so thin and fair that he appeared practically bald. By standing at the window of their fifth-floor office suite, he was just able to look across the park to the White House he considered himself to be protecting. It was a favorite stance and an unshakable conviction.

“I know,” George Petty said.

“Have you spoken to the doctor?”

Petty was a heavy, towering man who appeared slightly hunchbacked from his tendency to bring his head forward, like a turtle emerging from its shell. He did not reply at once, making much of filling the ornate bowl of his pipe with a sweet-smelling tobacco and tamping it into a firm base once he got it lighted. He said, “I didn’t consider it wise.”

“Why not?” asked Erickson, turning back into the room.

“It has to be his opinion, without any influence from us,” Petty said.

Erickson nodded. “Probably right,” he agreed at once.

“O’Farrell’s a good man.”

“One of the best,” said Erickson.

TWO

IT WAS more a mansion than a house, a huge granite-fronted building with Colonial pillars set back in at least three unfenced acres off one of those tree-lined roads that wind up through Chevy Chase toward the border with Maryland. The doctor personally admitted him, so quickly the man might have been waiting on the other side of the door. There was no noise anywhere to indicate anyone else in the house: there never had been, on any of the visits. O’Farrell followed the other man familiarly across the black-and-white marbled floor to the side consulting room. There was no medical staff here, either, unlike the man’s downtown clinic, which was one of the most comprehensively manned medical centers in Washington. But then that was public and this was private: very private indeed.

“How’s it going?” the doctor asked. His name was Hugh Symmons. He was a thin, prominently boned man who had conducted O’Farrell’s three-monthly examinations for the past four years. Despite having one of the highest security clearances as a CIA medical adviser, Symmons was kept from knowing O’Farrell’s real function, merely that it was a position imposing the maximum mental and physical stress. O’Farrell was aware there were other psychologists and psychiatrists with even higher clearances, the real tidy-up-your-head experts, who would be allowed to know his job: the fact that he was still at Symmons’s level proved that no one had discerned his uncertainty.

“Fine,” said O’Farrell.

Symmons waved him to an accustomed seat and opened a thumbed file and sat reading it, as if O’Farrell were a first-time patient. O’Farrell, who was used to the routine, gazed through the picture window to the expansive lawn. There were a lot of carefully maintained trees in the garden, several long-haired gray firs with branches sweeping down to touch the grass. Groups of squirrels scurried around their bases and there were others in the branches, and O’Farrell was surprised. He understood squirrels damaged trees and would have expected Symmons to employ some sort of pest control. O’Farrell, whose training had involved extensive psychological instruction, was glad of the reflection: just what he should be doing, musing unimportant thoughts to minimize the risk of anxiety. Was Symmons taking longer than usual? There was no benefit in posing unnecessary questions. O’Farrell checked his watch. Jill would be at the remedial center by now. A busy day, she’d predicted, at breakfast: eight patients at least. O’Farrell was glad his wife had gone back to physiotherapy now the kids had left home: gave her a proper outside interest and prevented her becoming bored. More unimportant musing, O’Farrell recognized, gratefully: not that he considered Jill unimportant in any way. He sometimes believed that was how she regarded him, though: secretly, of course, never any open accusation. He wished she didn’t. But it must be difficult for her to accept his supposedly being an accounts clerk, knowing as she did of his Special Forces beginning.

O’Farrell turned away from the window as Symmons looked up at last. “Time to play games,” the man announced.

O’Farrell got up and went to the side table, wondering what the sequence would be today: it was necessary for Symmons to vary the psychological assessment to prevent his being able automatically to complete the tests. O’Farrell realized it was to be physical coordination and judgment as Symmons began setting out the differently shaped blocks and wood bases.

“Three minutes,” the doctor said.

Two less than normal. Why the reduced completion span? No time to speculate: he only had three minutes. O’Farrell curbed the nervousness, feeling out in apparent control to fit the shapes correctly into their receiving places. They were different from any he had used before, again necessary to prevent his becoming accustomed. More difficult, he determined; he was sure they were more difficult. Some were carved and shaped almost identically and he made three consecutive mistakes before matching them to the board, in his frustration once almost dropping a piece. Careful, he told himself. Stupid to become frustrated and panicked. Exactly how the test was devised to make him behave. So exactly why he had to do the opposite. There were still two pieces unconnected when Symmons said, “Stop!”

He had failed before to complete fully, O’Farrell reassured himself. On several occasions, in fact: but not for a long time. It didn’t matter: by itself it didn’t matter at all.

“A bitch this time, eh?” Symmons suggested.

O’Farrell knew there was no remark, no apparent aside, that was insignificant during these sessions. He smiled and said, “Next time we’ll set up side bets.” That sounded good enough, someone unworried by a minor setback.

“Let’s try some words now.”

O’Farrell folded one hand casually over the other, crossing his legs as he did so, wanting to appear relaxed. It gave him the opportunity to feel for any wetness in his palms. No sweat at all, he decided, relieved.

“Mother,” set off Symmons, abruptly.

“Disaster.” Why this beginning? Symmons knew the story, but they hadn’t talked about it for a long time.

“Violence.”

“Peace,” responded O’Farrell, at once. Why violence, of all words?

“Death.”

“Dishonor.” The trigger words were not supposed to be connected but there was a link here, surely?

“Water.”

“Boat.” Easier, thought O’Farrell.

“Money.”

“Debt.” Why the hell had he said that! He wasn’t in debt—had never been in debt—but the answer could indicate he had financial difficulties.

“Country.”

“Patriot.” Which was sincerely how he felt about himself: the justification—no, the solid basis—for much of what he did. All of what he did, in fact.

“Dog.”

“Bone.” Nothing wrong that time.

“Fuck.”

“Obscenity.” Another change from normal: O’Farrell couldn’t remember Symmons swearing before.

“God.”

“Devil.”

“Right.”

“Wrong.”

“Plastic.”

“Cup.” It caught O’Farrell as absurd and he came dangerously close to laughing, only just managing to subdue a reaction he knew to be wrong. Nothing insignificant, he thought again.

“Boy.”

“Son.” Saturday tomorrow: the day for the weekly call to John. Stop drifting! No room now for inconsequential intrusions.

“Car.”

“Engine.”

“Oppressor.”

“Russia.” It had to do with his mother!

“Murder.”

“Crime.” Another link, to the first two words, surely!

“Gun.”

“Weapon.” And again! O’Farrell thought he could feel some dampness on his hands now.

“School.”

“Class.”

“Capital.”

“Punishment.” Damn! The man had meant “capitol.”

“Birth.”

Death was the first word that entered O’Farrell’s mind, the reply he should have given according to the rules of the examination. Cheating, he said, “Baby.”

“Age.”

“Retire.”

“Rat.”

“Enemy.” Could have done better there.

“Accuse.”

“Defend.”

“Traitor.”

“Spy.”

“Hang.”

“Kill” was the word but O’Farrell didn’t say it: his mind wouldn’t produce a substitute and Symmons said, “Quicker! You’re not allowed to consider the responses! You know that! Hang.”

“Picture.”

“Sex.”

“Wrong.” Why the hell had he said that; it didn’t even make sense! O’Farrell hoped the perspiration wasn’t obvious on his face.

“Gamble.”

“Streak.”

“Family.”

“Life.”

“Wife.”

“Protector.” Better: much better.

“Sentence.”

“Justice.” Damn again! Why hadn’t he said someming like “words” or “book”!

“Evil.”

“Destroy.” How he felt. But maybe there should have been a different reply. It sounded like a piece of dialogue from one of those ridiculous revenge films where the hero bulged wim muscles and glistened with oil and could take out twenty opponents with a flick of his wrist without disarranging his hairstyle.

“Dedication.”

Once more O’Farrell stopped short of the instinctive response—“absolute”—but without the hesitation that had brought about the previous rebuke. He said, “Resolution.”

Symmons raised both hands in a warding-off gesture and said, “Okay. Enough!”

Enough for what or for whom? queried O’Farrell. He wasn’t sure (careful, never decide upon anything unless you’re absolutely sure) but he had the impression of another change from their earlier encounters: before this Ping-Pong of words had always seemed to last longer than it had today. Continuing the analogy, O’Farrell wondered who had won the game. He wanted desperately to ask the psychologist how he had done, but he didn’t. The question would have shown an uncertain man and he could never be shown to be uncertain. O’Farrell said, without sufficient thought, “You sure?”

Symmons smiled, a baring of teeth more than a humorous expression. He said, “That’s the trouble. Ever being sure.”

Don’t react, thought O’Farrell: the stupid bastard was playing another sort of word game. What the fuck (obscene, he remembered) right did this supposedly scientific, aloof son of a bitch have to make judgments on the state of someone else’s mind? Didn’t statistics prove that these jerks—psychiatrists or psychologists or whatever they liked to call themselves—had the highest mentally disordered suicide rates of any claimed medical profession? Important to present the correct reaction, O’Farrell thought: glibly confident, he decided. He said, “Your problem, doc: you’re the one who’s got to be sure.”

“You’re right,” agreed the other man, discomfortingly. “My problem; always my problem.”

Symmons smiled, waiting, and O’Farrell smiled back, waiting. The silence built up, growing pressure behind a weakened dam about to burst. Mustn’t break, O’Farrell told himself. Mustn’t break; couldn’t break. It had to be Symmons who spoke first: who had to give in.

He did. The psychologist said, “How do you feel about colors?”

O’Farrell smiled again, enjoying his victory, and said, “Why don’t you find out?”

O’Farrell considered the color test—matching colors, identifying colors, blending colors into the right sections of a spectrum divided into primary hues—easier than the verbal inquisition and finished it feeling quite satisfied that he had made no errors; done well, in fact.

The physical examination was as complete as the mental probe. O’Farrell, well aware of the procedure, stripped to a tied-at-the-back operation gown and subjected himself to two hours of intense and concentrated scrutiny. Symmons put him in a soundproof room for audio tests and plunged it into absolute blackness for the eyesight check. Before putting O’Farrell on a treadmill, the man took blood samples, as well as checking blood pressure and lung capacity. The man gradually increased the treadmill speed, pushing O’Farrell to an unannounced but obviously predetermined level. O’Farrell was panting and weak-legged when it finished.

O’Farrell was weighed and measured—thighs and chest and waist as well as biceps—and touched his toes for Symmons to make an anal investigation and spread his legs and coughed when Symmons told him to cough.

O’Farrell dressed unhurriedly, wanting some small redress for the indignities. He fixed and then refixed his tie and arranged the tuck of his shirt around a hard waist to spread the creases and carefully parted and combed his hair. The reflected image was of a neat, unobtrusive, unnoticed man, fading fair hair cropped close against the encroaching gray; smooth-faced; open, untroubled eyes; no shake or twitching mannerisms visible at all. All right, thought O’Farrell, actually moving his lips in voiceless conversation with himself; you’re all right, so don’t worry.

“Will I live?” he demanded as he emerged from the dressing area, caught by the cynicism of a further attempt at glibness. That was all right, too: Symmons didn’t know. Only a very few people knew.

Symmons stayed hunched over the formidable bundle of files and documents and folders that constituted O’Farrell’s medical record. Symmons said, “A shade over one hundred and forty-eight pounds?”

“I saw it register on the machine.”

“The same as you were twenty years ago.” Symmons smiled up at him. “That’s remarkable at forty-six: there’s usually a weight increase whether you like it or not.”

“I suppose I’m lucky.”

“Still not smoking?”

“Hardly likely I’ll start now, is it?”

“And still only one martini at night?”

“No more.” That was near truth enough.

“What about worries?”

“I don’t have any.”

“Everyone has something to worry about,” challenged the man.

But what precisely was the something—the doubt—making him feel as he did? O’Farrell said, “Lucky again, I guess.”

“That makes you a very unusual guy indeed,” Symmons insisted.

“I don’t think of myself being unusual in any way,” O’Farrell said. Didn’t he?

“What about money difficulties?”

Damn that reaction to the financial question. O’Farrell said, with attempted forcefulness, “None.”

“None at all?” pressed Symmons.

“No.”

“What about sex? Everything okay between you and Jill?”

They did not make love with the regularity or with the need they’d once had, but when they did, it was always good. O’Farrell said, “Everything’s fine.”

“What about elsewhere?”

“Elsewhere?” O’Farrell asked, choosing to misunderstand.

“Any sudden affairs?”

It was a fairly regular question, acknowledged O’Farrell. Getting satisfaction from the reply, he said, “None.”

“You’ve said that before,” the doctor reminded him unnecessarily.

“It’s been true before, like it is now.”

“Not a lot of guys who say that are telling the truth.”

“I am,” said O’Farrell, who was. He’d never ever considered another woman, knew he never would.

“Jill must be a very special lady.”

“She is,” said O’Farrell, bridling.

The psychologist discerned the reaction at once. “It worry you to talk about her?”

“It worries me to talk about her in the context of screwing somebody else.” Where was he being led? “Jill hasn’t got any part of this,” he said.

“Any part of what?”

“What I do.” Fucked you, you self-satisfied bastard, he thought, knowing that Symmons couldn’t ask the obvious follow-up question.

“That worry you, what you do?”

O’Farrell swallowed at the ease of the other man’s escape. “No,” he said, pleased with the evenness of his own voice. “What I do doesn’t worry me.”

“What does worry you?”

“I told you already: nothing.”

“Been to the graves lately?”

It had been a long time coming. “Not for quite a while.”

“Why not?”

“No particular reason.”

“That used to worry you,” the psychologist said.

O’Farrell felt the slight dampness of discomfort again. “Wrong emotion,” he insisted. “It was sadness that something that happened to her so young made her later do what she did.”

“Lose her mind, you mean?” Symmons was goading him.

“That. And the rest.”

“Never feel any guilt? That you could have done more but didn’t?”

“No,” O’Farrell insisted again. “No one knew. Guessed.”

“Looks like that’s it, then,” Symmons said abruptly.

O’Farrell had not expected the sudden conclusion. He said, “See you in three months then?” The squirrels were still swarming over the trees. O’Farrell had an irrational urge to ask the man if they damaged his garden but decided against it: he couldn’t give a damn whether they chewed up everything.

“Maybe,” Symmons said, noncommittal.

He would be expected to respond to the doubt, O’Farrell realized. So he didn’t. He let Symmons lead him back across the coldly patterned hallway and at the entrance gave the perfunctory farewell handshake. Because he guessed the man might be watching from some vantage point, he did not hesitate when he got into the car, as if he needed to recover, but started the engine at once. He carefully controlled his exit, not overaccelerating to make the wheels spin but going out as fast as he could, an unconcerned man wanting to get back to work as quickly as possible after an intrusive disruption. Which he actually didn’t want to do. He was only about thirty minutes—forty-five at the outside—from Lafayette Square, and Petty would expect him to come in, but O’Farrell decided on unaccustomed impulse not to bother. A call would do. Start the weekend early, instead: that was what half the people in Washington did anyway.

O’Farrell drove without any positive goal, the road dropping constantly toward the capital. He had done all right, he decided, repeating the dressing-room assurance. But he’d been stupid to try to find significance in Symmons’s questions: he’d have to avoid that next time. There’d been one or two moments when he’d come near to making mistakes by wrongly concentrating upon what the psychologist meant rather than upon what he was saying, but nothing disastrous.

Jill wouldn’t be home yet. And she might think it odd if he were in the house ahead of her, because it hardly ever happened. Maybe he should go to Lafayette Square after all. No, he rejected once more. What then? O’Farrell started to concentrate on his surroundings and realized he was near Georgetown and made another impulsive decision. If he were going to goof off, why not really goof off?

O’Farrell got a parking place on Jefferson and walked back up to M Street, choosing the bar at random. Inside, he sat at the bar itself, selecting with professionally instilled instinct a stool at its very end, where there was a wall closing off one side. He hesitated only momentarily when the barman inquired: the martini was adequate but not as good as those he made at home.

Why was he doing this? It was out of pattern, a definite break in routine, and he wasn’t supposed—wasn’t allowed—to do anything contrary to pattern or routine. But where was the harm! He was just goofing off a couple of hours early, that’s all. It wasn’t as if he were on assignment: never took risks on assignment. No harm then. Have to call Petty, though. But not yet: plenty of time to do that. From along the counter the barman looked at him questioningly, and briefly O’Farrell considered another drink but then shook his head. Only one, he’d assured the psychologist. What about when he got home? So maybe it would be one of those nights when he’d have another. No reason why he shouldn’t have more than one, like he did occasionally. Just a small pattern break, still no harm.

O’Farrell lingered for another fifteen minutes before going to the pay phone further into the bar, glad that temporarily there was no music. He dialed the number of Petty’s private telephone, the one on his desk. The man answered without any identification, and O’Farrell didn’t name himself either.

“Where are you?” his controller asked.

“Thought I’d go home early,” O’Farrell said. Now he’d told Petty, he wasn’t even goofing off anymore.

There was a momentary pause. “Sure,” the man agreed. “How did it go?”

“Like it always does.”

“Was he happy?”

You get the official reports, I don’t, O’Farrell thought. He said, “Seemed to be.”

“Have a good weekend then.”

“You too.”

O’Farrell used the Key Bridge and chose the Washington Memorial Parkway instead of the inner highway, wanting to drive along the Potomac. He did so gazing across the river, picking out the needle of the Washington Monument and the Capitol dome. The word stuck in his mind, from that day’s assessment. And then others. Country. And patriot. Which really was how he felt: he was a free man in a free and beautiful country and it was right that he should feel—that he should be—patriotic toward it. And he was; O’Farrell reckoned it would be difficult to find many other men prepared to take their patriotic duty as seriously as he did.

Jill was already home. He kissed her and asked about her day and she complained it had been busy and asked about his, and he said his had been, too. She believed him to be a financial analyst at the State Department with particular responsibility for the budgets of overseas embassies, which provided a satisfactory explanation for those sudden foreign trips; when he was not employed in his true function O’Farrell actually did work on accounts, those of the CIA’s Plans Directorate. Of everything, O’Farrell found the pretense with his wife the most difficult to maintain: she trusted him absolutely and every day of their married life since joining the Agency he’d lied to her.

The martini he made for himself was a proper one, with a bite that caught in the throat; he slightly overfilled the shaker, so he had to take a sip to make room for the remainder. Two and a half, he thought as he did so. No harm at all.

O’Farrell took the glass to the den, placing it carefully on the side table away from his desk, where there was no danger of anything accidentally spilling on the clippings. He kept them in a thick book, covered in genuine Moroccan leather. He opened it familiarly but at random, eyes not immediately focusing on the words. It was the obituary. It was practically a eulogy, running almost to two columns: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT LAW TO THE TERRITORY was the headline. O’Farrell became conscious of the words shifting and realized his hands were shaking, very slightly. Just the weight of the book, he told himself, trying to concentrate upon the account again but finding it difficult because of another intrusive thought.

O’Farrell forced himself to confront it. Had his great-grandfather ever questioned what he had to do, been unsure whether he could go on doing it? The way O’Farrell was starting to question what he was called upon to do?

There was one part of the diplomatic bag, a specially sealed and marked satchel, which no one but the ambassador was allowed to open, and the ambassador, upon strict orders from Havana itself, always had to be available instantly to receive it.

José Gaviria Rivera recognized the necessity for such precautions but was frequently inconvenienced by them. As he was tonight. He’d allowed a two-hour fail-safe between its expected arrival and the time he had to be in the reserved Covent Garden box alongside a mistress about whom, almost disconcertingly, he felt differently than he’d felt about any other. But because of fog the damned aircraft had been diverted to Manchester. So he couldn’t make the curtain. She’d said she understood when he’d telephoned, coquettishly insisting she would punish him for it later, but Rivera actually enjoyed La Bohème; this was an acclaimed production and he had wanted to see all of it, not merely a segment. So it was at the moment difficult to convince himself that the system really had the highest priority. Not that Rivera would ever have neglected business for pleasure, even for someone as pleasurable as Henrietta. Internal as well as external spying was an important function for those members of the Direcctión Generale de Inteligencia posing under diplomatic cover within the embassy. Because of the special demands being made upon him, Rivera had succeeded in putting himself above any sort of prying whatsoever. He was fully aware how much those specific orders from Havana were resented by the local station chief, Carlos Mendez. And how very anxious the man was to send an adverse report back to Cuba.

Rivera sighed, striding back and forth in front of the window of his office. Perhaps he should be philosophical in another way: perhaps the sexual punishment for one act would make up for missing the first of another. Had he allowed himself to consider the emotion, which of course was unthinkable, Rivera might have imagined himself in love with Henrietta.

It was almost an hour before the diplomatic bag arrived and his personal “Eyes Only” satchel was hurried to him. Rivera let the breath go heavily from himself, forming a whistle, as he read the demand. It was far greater than ever before, far beyond the usual small arms and handguns and low-caliber ammunition, although they were included. This time he had to supply ground-to-air missiles and sophisticated communication equipment; there was even a request for tanks, if they could be supplied.

Rivera sat back, gazing sightlessly at the door, momentarily curious. Where was it all destined to go? Nicaragua was an obvious recipient, despite the supposed peace accord with the Contras. Maybe Honduras. Or Panama, perhaps; the government there might, after thumbing its nose at Washington, consider an arms buildup a sensible insurance. What about the guerrillas in Colombia, the country upon which it all depended anyway?

Rivera shrugged. It did not really matter, wherever it was. His part began and ended with European arms dealers. And even before making the most preliminary of inquiries, Rivera knew the cost would be incredible. He smiled. And not all of that incredible expenditure was actually going to be spent upon the weaponry he was being ordered to buy.

Rivera knew precisely his importance in Havana’s drugs-for-arms-arms-for-drugs chain: without him there wouldn’t even be a chain. So it was right that such expertise be properly rewarded. Ten percent was the usual fee he awarded himself, but this was a much bigger consignment than any he’d handled before. It was going to take a lot of organizing. He considered that his unofficial commission should go up commensurately. He didn’t doubt that those at the other end of the chain, those Cuban diplomats entrusted through embassies and legations and missions with the drug distribution, were making far greater personal profits than he was. Not that Rivera was jealous. He knew he would not have enjoyed being a money raiser, actually dealing in cocaine. That would have been much too dangerous.

THREE

O’FARRELL’S OBSERVANCE of order and routine extended into his private life. It was a Saturday, and on Saturdays his first job was to clean the cars. He always did it early because it meant backing the vehicles out of the narrow garage onto Fairfax, with a view of the Old Presbyterian Meeting House. By midmorning, particularly in the spring and summer, Alexandria became thronged with tourists, and he liked to finish before they arrived. Not that he wasn’t proud to live in such a historic township. The reverse. O’Farrell got real pleasure from residing in a township where George Washington and Robert E. Lee had once lived; he knew all its history and its landmarks and talked knowledgeably on the few occasions when he had been trapped by early visitors. But those occasions had been very few; O’Farrell shunned casual contact, even with anonymous tourists: certainly with anonymous tourists carrying cameras that might record him.

Today there was an additional reason for wanting to be outside. After the two and a half martinis of the previous night he’d awoken with an ache banded like a cord around his head, and he needed to get out into the air.

It was warm, despite being early, and apart from the headache O’Farrell was comfortable in jeans and shirt sleeves. There was, of course, a pattern to the cleaning. He hosed the car down first, to soften the dirt and dust, washed it off with soapy water, and then hosed it down again before toweling away the excess water. He completed the drying with a chamois cloth and finished off by polishing with more toweling.

O’Farrell enjoyed engines. They performed to predetermined orderliness, dozens of independent parts making up a complete whole. He supposed that tinkering with the workings of his car and Jill’s had been his only hobby until he’d started upon the ancestral archive. He greased them and balanced them and tuned them, and as he finished off the cleaning O’Farrell decided that the care and attention paid off. The paintwork of both had practically the same showroom sheen, which they wouldn’t have had if he’d stop-started them through some plastic-brushed car wash. There wasn’t any rust, not so much as a warning stain behind any of the decorative metalwork. O’Farrell reckoned he would easily get another four years out of each vehicle before trading them in.

By which time he would be fifty, O’Farrell calculated, reversing the Ford back into its garage. Retirement age; another word association from the previous day. Not slippers and pipe and walking-the-dog sort of retirement. He’d have to wait another ten years for that, patiently reviewing and assessing the Plans Directorate finances full-time. But spared that other function, that other function he increasingly felt unable to perform. Dear God, how much he wanted to be spared that again! What were his chances? Impossible to compute. The last time had been more than a year ago—the first occasion he had felt nervous and hesitated and almost made a disastrous mistake—and between that assignment and the one before there had been an interval of almost three years. Always possible, then, that he wouldn’t be called upon again: possible but unlikely, he thought, forcing the objectivity. So why didn’t he simply quit? Go to Petty and Erickson and tell them how he felt and ask to be taken off the active roster? He knew there were others, although naturally he wasn’t aware of their names. Not as good as he was, according to Petty, but O’Farrell put that down to so much obvious bullshit, the sort the controller doubtless said to them all.

So why didn’t he just quit? Had his great-grandfather ever backed down? O’Farrell wondered, attempting to answer one question with another. Bullshit of his own now. Until these handshaking doubts, O’Farrell had always found it easy to consider himself a law officer like his great-grandfather, merely obeying different rules to match different circumstances. Now he acknowledged that if he made the analogy with objective honesty, what he did and what his ancestor had done in the 1860s were hugely different. So that answer didn’t wash. What did? O’Farrell didn’t know, not completely. There was a combination of reasons, not sufficient by themselves but enough when he assembled them all together, the way the individual parts of an automobile engine came together into something that made functional sense. Different though his job might be from that of his great-grandfather, he was enforcing justice. It was something very few people could do. (Would want to do, echoed a doubting voice in his mind.) And he genuinely did not want to back down, submit to an emotion he could only regard as weakness, although weakness wasn’t really what it was.

There was also the money to consider, reluctant though he was to bring it into any equation because he found the self-criticism (blood money? bounty hunter?) too easily disturbing. For what he did he was paid $100,000 a year, $50,000 tax-free channeled through CIA-maintained offshore accounts. The system enabled him to live in this historically listed house in Alexandria and help John now that he’d quit the airline to go back to school for his master’s. It enabled him and Jill to fly up to Chicago whenever they felt like it to visit Ellen and the boy.

He wouldn’t quit, O’Farrell determined. He’d get a grip on himself and stop constantly having such damned silly doubts and see out his remaining four years. If he were called upon to take up an assignment, he’d carry it out as successfully and as undetectably as he’d carried out all the others in the past. Not that many, in fact. Just five. Each justified. Each guilty. Each properly sentenced, albeit by an unofficial tribunal. And each performed—albeit unofficially again—in the name of the country of which he was a patriot.

Jill’s car was smaller than his, a Toyota, and it did not take O’Farrell as long to clean as the Ford. He did it just as meticulously, seeking rust that he could not find, and regained the house before the tourist invasion.

O’Farrell was relieved by the decision he’d reached. And his headache had gone, like his inner tension.

O’Farrell and Jill drank coffee while they waited for eight o’clock Arizona time, knowing that John would be waiting for their call. In the event it was Beth who answered, because John was upstairs with Jeff. O’Farrell, immediately concerned, asked what was wrong with his grandson, and Beth said “nothing,” and then John came on the line to repeat the assurance. He thanked O’Farrell for the last check but said he was embarrassed to take it. O’Farrell told his son not to be so proud and to keep a record so that John could pay him back when he got his degree and after that the sort of job he wanted. It was not arranged that they call their daughter in Chicago until the afternoon and when they did, they got her answering machine, which they didn’t expect because Ellen knew the time they would be calling; it was the same every weekend. Always had been and particularly after the divorce. They left a message that they had called and hoped everything was all right and tried once more before going out that evening and got the machine again, so they left a second recording.

“That’s not like her,” said Jill as they drove into town. They used her car because, being smaller, it was easier to park.

“It’s happened before,” said O’Farrell. It had become so ingrained over the years in his professional life not to overrespond (certainly never to panic) that O’Farrell found it impossible to react differently in his private life. Or did he?

“Why didn’t she call us? She knows we like to speak every week.”

“There’s all day tomorrow,” O’Farrell pointed out, going against his own need for regularity. He wished Jill had adjusted better to the collapse of Ellen’s marriage; she found it difficult to believe their daughter preferred to make her own life with her son in faraway Chicago rather than come back to Alexandria or somewhere close, where they would be near, caring for her.

“I wonder if something has happened to Billy,” said Jill, in sudden alarm.

“If something had happened to Billy, she would have gotten a message through to us.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You’re getting upset for no reason.” Routine sometimes had its disadvantages, he thought.

There was some roadwork on Memorial Bridge but the delay wasn’t too bad and they still got into town in good time, because O’Farrell always allowed for traffic problems. He found a parking place at once on 13th Street and as they walked down toward Pennsylvania he said, “We’ve time for a drink, if you like.”

Jill looked at him curiously. “If you want one.”

“It’s practically an hour before the curtain,” O’Farrell pointed out. “The alternative is just to sit and wait.”

“Okay,” she said, without enthusiasm.

They went to the Round Robin room at the Willard and managed seats against the wall, beneath the likenesses of people like Woodrow Wilson and Walt Whitman and Mark Twain and even a droop-mustached Buffalo Bill Cody, all of whom had used it in the past. O’Farrell got the drinks—martini for himself, white wine for Jill—and stood looking at the drawings. Had his great-grandfather encountered William Cody? he wondered. The martini could have been better.

There had been a lot of noise from a group on the far side of the small room when they’d entered and it became increasingly louder, breaking out into a full-blown argument. There were five people, two couples and a man by himself; the arguers appeared to be one of the couples and the unattached man was attempting to intervene and placate both of them. O’Farrell heard “fuck” and “bastard” like everyone else in me room and the barman said, “Easy now: let’s take it easy, eh folks?” They ignored him. The would-be mediator put his hand on the arguing man’s arm and was shoved away, hard, so that he staggered back toward the bar and collided with another customer, spilling his drink. The barman called out, “That’s enough, okay!” and the woman said, “Oh, my God!” and began to cry. O’Farrell gauged the distance to the only exit against the nearness of the disturbance and decided that the shouting group was closer. Better to wait where they were than attempt to leave and risk getting involved. The man who’d staggered back apologized and gestured for the spilled drink to be replaced and went back to his group, jabbing with outstretched fingers at the chest of the man who’d pushed him. Waste of effort, thought O’Farrell: at least three inches from the point in the chest that would have brought the man down, and the carotid in the neck was better exposed anyway. The bridge of the nose, too. And the temple and the lower rib and the inner ankle. The killing pressure points that he’d been trained so well how to use—but only in extreme emergency, because the absolutely essential rule was always to avoid possible recognition by an intended victim—reeled off in his mind until O’Farrell consciously stopped the reflection. It was prohibited for him to become involved in any sort of dispute or altercation, to attract the slightest attention, official or otherwise.

“Why doesn’t someone do something!” Jill demanded, beside him. “Look at her, poor woman!”

“Someone will have sent for security,” O’Farrell said, and as he spoke two uniformed guards came into the room and began herding the group away, ignoring their protests.

Jill shuddered and said, “That was awful!”

“Embarrassing, that’s all,” O’Farrell said. “They were drunk.”

“I didn’t like it.” Jill shuddered again.

It wasn’t being a very successful day, O’Farrell thought. He said, “Do you want another drink?”

“No,” she said, at once. “Surely you don’t, either?”

“No,” said O’Farrell. There would easily have been time. “We might as well go, then.”

They emerged from the hotel through the main Pennsylvania Avenue exit and immediately saw the group continuing their argument. The crying woman was still weeping and her hair was disarrayed. The other woman was trying to pull her male companion away and he was making weak protests, clearly anxious to get out of the situation, but not wanting to be seen to do so. As O’Farrell and his wife looked, the man who appeared to be at the center of the dispute lashed out; the disheveled woman somehow didn’t see the movement and the open-handed blow caught her fully in the side of the face, sending her first against the hotel wall and then sprawling across the sidewalk. When she tried to get up, he hit her again, keeping her down. Neither of the other two men attempted to intrude. One allowed his companion to pull him away, and the other, the one who had made an effort in the bar, visibly shrugged off responsibility.

“Do something!” Jill insisted. “Somebody do something! He’s going to hit her again.”

The man did, and this time the woman stayed down. Distantly O’Farrell thought he heard the wail of a police siren. He took Jill’s arm, forcibly leading her back into the hotel toward the long corridor that bisected the building to F Street.

“We can’t walk away!” Jill said. “She could be hurt.”

“It’s okay,” O’Farrell said. “It’s all being taken care of.”

“What are you talking about!”

“Didn’t you hear the sirens?” She’d expected him to intervene, he knew. And was disappointed that he hadn’t.

“No!”

“I did. They’re coming.”

On the pavement outside, on F Street, Jill stopped, head to one side. “I still don’t hear anything.”

“They’ll have gotten there by now: police, ambulance, everyone.” O’Farrell wondered why he was shaking, and why his hands were wet, as well. Jill would think him weak, a runaway coward.

“He could have killed her.”

“No,” O’Farrell said.

“How do you know?”

How do I know! Because I’m an acknowledged and recognized expert, O’Farrell thought: that’s what I do! He said, “It was one of those lovers’ things, matrimonial. An hour from now they’ll be in the sack, making up.”

“Can you imagine anyone capable of hurting another human being like that!”

“No,” O’Farrell said again, more easily now because he’d learned to field questions like that. “I can’t imagine it.”

The show was at the National Theater so they cut down 14th Street, pausing at the Marriott comer to look back along the opposite block. O’Farrell saw, relieved, that the ambulance and police vehicles were there. “See?” he said, snatching the small victory. The fighting couple were side by side now, the woman shaking her head in some denial or refusal, the man with his arm protectively around her shoulder.

“I can’t imagine that, either,” Jill said.

“Probably even turns them on.”

The play was a regional theater company’s far too experimental performance of Oedipus that had been under-rehearsed and mounted too soon. O’Farrell insisted on their going to the bar during intermission—switching to gin and tonic this time, because he wasn’t prepared to risk the martinis—and when they went back into the auditorium a lot of people, practically an entire row at the rear of the orchestra, hadn’t bothered to return. O’Farrell wished he and Jill hadn’t, either. Throughout, Jill sat pulled away from him, against the far arm of her seat.

Afterward, certainly without sufficient thought, O’Farrell suggested they eat, and at once Jill said, “Ellen might have called.”

In the car she continued to sit away from him, as she had in the theater. Neither spoke until they’d crossed the river again, back into Virginia.

“It wasn’t very good, was it?”

“Dreadful.”

“So much for the Post review.” An altogether bad day, O’Farrell thought again.

“I still don’t care,” Jill blurted suddenly.

“Care about what?”

“If it were a lovers’ quarrel or what die hell it was: I couldn’t understand no one going to help that woman.”

It was the nearest she’d come to an outright accusation, he guessed. It wasn’t a good feeling, believing Jill despised him. He said, “It would have been ridiculous for me to have become involved. He might have had a gun, a knife, anything. You really think I should have risked being killed?”

“I wasn’t drinking of you,” Jill said, unconvincingly.

Overly defensive, O’Farrell said. “There’s you to worry about, and John and everyone in Phoenix to worry about, and Ellen and Billy to worry about. You think I’m going to endanger so many people I love!” Hadn’t he endangered them too many times? he asked himself.

“It just upset me, mat’s all.”

“Forget it.”

“I’m sorry. I know you’re right. You’re always right.”

“I said forget it.” What would she have thought if he had gene in, reducing the bullying bastard to blubbering jelly? Another preposterous reflection: he never entered an unarmed combat training session—and he still went through two a month—without die prior injunction that his expertise was strictly limited to what he did professionally and should never be employed in any other circumstance.

Ellen’s call was waiting on their machine and he let Jill return it, very aware of her need. He sat opposite her in die living room, near the bookshelves, smiling in expectation of his wife’s smile of relief at whatever explanation Ellen gave. But a smile didn’t come.

Instead, in horror, Jill exclaimed, “What!”

There was no way O’Farrell could hear Ellen’s reply but his wife apparently cut their daughter off in the middle, telling the girl to wait for O’Farrell to get on an extension.

O’Farrell actually ran to the den, snatching up the telephone to say, “What the hell is it!”

“Nothing,” said Ellen, in a too obvious attempt at reassurance. “No, that’s not quite true. It’s important, but Billy isn’t involved, isn’t in any trouble.”

“What!” repeated O’Farrell.

“It was a special meeting of the PTA today,” their daughter said. “Very special. All the parents and all the teachers. Like I said, Billy isn’t involved; he says he hasn’t been approached and we’ve talked it through and I believe him. But there have been quite a few seizures, so there’s no doubt that drugs are in circulation in the school.”

“What sort of drugs?” Jill asked.

“Everything,” Ellen said. “Even crack. Heroin, too.”

“Billy’s not nine years old yet!” O’Farrell said.

“Nancy Reagan sought no-drug pledges from nine-year-olds,” Ellen reminded them. “And no one’s gotten to Billy yet.”

“Get out of Chicago,” Jill implored. “Come back somewhere around here, near to us.”

“You telling me it’s any better in Washington?”

“You’d be safer here.”

“We’re not in any danger here. You asked me where I’d been, and I told you. If I’d imagined this sort of reaction, I might have lied, to spare you the worry.”

“We’ll come up next weekend,” Jill announced.

There was a question in her voice directed toward O’Farrell on the extension and he said, “Yes, we’ll come up.”

“What for?”

“Because we want to,” said her mother decisively. “We haven’t been up for a long time; you know that.”

“A month,” Ellen corrected. “I’m not going to escalate this into a bigger drama than it is, Mother; let Billy imagine it’s some big deal that’ll attract a lot of family attention if he tries it.”

“We won’t escalate anything,” Jill promised. “We just want to come up. See how you are. That’s all.”

“I’m fine. Really I’m fine.”

“Please let us come up, Ellen,” O’Farrell said, requesting rather than insisting.

“You know you don’t have to ask,” the girl said, softening.

“You sure Billy’s all right?”

“Positive.”

“What’s happening to the people doing it? The dealers?” O’Farrell demanded.

“There haven’t been any major arrests yet. Just kids, pushing it to make money to buy more stuff for themselves.”

My beautiful country—the country of which I’m proud to be a patriot—being eroded internally by this cancer, O’Farrell thought. He said, “So what is going to be done?”

“That was the purpose of the meeting: telling us how to look out for signs. We’ve set up a kind of parents’ watch committee.”

For kids not nine years old, thought O’Farrell. He said, “You take care, you hear?” and was immediately annoyed at the banality of the remark.

“Of course I will.”

“Tell Billy he can choose whatever treat he wants for next weekend.”

“You shouldn’t spoil him like you do.”

“Call us at once if anything happens,” Jill cut in.

“Nothing’s going to happen, Mother!”

That night, in bed, they lay side by side but untouching, insulated from each other by their separate thoughts. It was Jill who broke the silence. She said, “I’m sorry, about tonight.”

“What about tonight?”

“You were right not getting involved in that scene in the bar. An awful lot of people do depend upon you. It would be ridiculous to put anything at risk.”

“I won’t, ever,” O’Farrell said. It did not actually constitute a lie, he told himself, but it was still a promise he could never be sure of keeping.

Petty was engulfed in so much tobacco smoke from his pipe that his voice came disembodied through it; Erickson thought it looked like some poor special effect from one of the late-night television horror movies to which he was addicted.

“Well?” Petty asked, wanting the other man to volunteer an opinion first.

“Certainly appears to go some way toward confirming the impressions Symmons formed three months ago,” Erickson said.

Petty picked up the psychologist’s report, concentrating only upon the uppermost précis. “But this time Symmons considered it a challenging encounter, that O’Farrell was fighting him.”

“Why would O’Farrell want to challenge the man?” the deputy asked. The psychologist hadn’t reached a conclusion about the attitude.

“I wish I knew,” the controller said, refusing to give one. “I really wish I knew.”

“Then there’s the preoccupation with violence,” Erikson pointed out, going deeper into the report where Symmons had flagged a series of word associations.

“And he talked to himself when he was dressing,” Petty added. They knew because a camera was installed behind the mirror into which O’Farrell had gazed, arranging and rearranging his tie and mouthing to himself the assurance that he’d come through the interrogation successfully.

“It happens,” Erickson said, with a resigned sigh. Today across Lafayette Park some protesters were marching up and down outside the White House; the angle of the window made it impossible for him to see what the protest was about.

“I don’t think we should be too hasty,” Petty cautioned.

Erickson turned curiously back into the room. “Use him again, you mean?”

“He is good,” the huge man insisted.

“Was, according to this.” Erickson gestured with his copy of the psychologist’s report.

“It would be wrong to make a definite decision just on the basis of two doubtful assessments,” Petty argued. “There’s never been the slightest problem with any operation we’ve given O’Farrell.”

“Isn’t that the basis upon which the decision should be made?” Erickson queried. “That there never can be the slightest problem.”

“We’ll wait,” Petty said. “Just wait and see.”

For a long time after it happened, Jill used to accompany him to the cemetery, but today O’Farrell hadn’t told her he was coming; there hadn’t seemed to be any reason for doing so. He guessed he would not have come himself but for the session with Symmons. O’Farrell gazed down at the inscription on his parents’ grave, easily able to recall every horrific moment of that discovery, his father blasted beyond recognition, his mother too. And of finding the note, the stumbled attempt of a tortured mind to explain why she was killing the man she loved—and who loved her—and then herself. Oddly, she had not mentioned Latvia and what had happened there: the real explanation for it all. Carefully O’Farrell brushed away the leaves fallen from an overhanging tree and placed the flowers he’d brought, caught by a sudden awareness. He had not realized it until now, but his mother’s running amok with a shotgun coincided almost to the month with his decision to find out as much as possible about the origins of his settler great-grandfather, the man who’d become a lawman. The psychologist would probably be able to find some significance in that if he told the man. But he wouldn’t, O’Farrell decided. He didn’t believe there was any relevance.

FOUR

EARLY IN his assignment José Rivera had regretted that the Cuban embassy was in London’s High Holborn and not one of the impressive mansion legations in Kensington. Estelle, he knew, remained upset, but then his wife was a snob and easily upset; she considered it reduced them to second-grade diplomats.

Rivera didn’t regret the location of the embassy anymore. Carlos Mendez, the resentful local head of the Dirección Generale de Inteligencia, maintained close contact with the KGB rezidentura attached to the Soviet embassy in Kensington, and from Mendez, despite their limited contact, Rivera knew of the intensive surveillance imposed there by British counterintelligence. And intensive surveillance was the very last thing to which Rivera wanted to be subjected. For that reason, once he’d been given the arms-buying role in Europe, Rivera had persuaded Havana to free him from Mendez’s prying. The given excuse was that arms dealers wouldn’t trade if they thought their comings and goings were being recorded. The real reason was Rivera’s determination to restore a family fortune lost when Fidel Castro came to power.

There was nearly two million dollars so far on deposit in a numbered account at the Swiss Bank Corporation on Zurich’s Paradeplatz, all unofficial commissions creamed off previous deals. He was impatient for today’s meeting to gauge by how much that amount was likely to increase from the latest huge order from Havana. It would be huge, he calculated; it was a comforting, satisfying feeling. Rivera liked being rich, and wanted to be richer.

Rivera was confident he had established the way. It was always to obtain everything demanded, in less time than was allowed, from men whose names were known only to himself, but no one else. Which made him absolutely indispensable. More than indispensable: unmovable, which was very important.

Rivera liked London. He liked the house in Hampstead and the polo at Windsor. Hardly any part of Europe was more than three hours’ flying time away—Zurich even less—and by his upbringing Rivera always considered himself more European than Latin American. Until, like the survivors they were, his family realized Batista’s Cuban regime was doomed, they had been among the most fervent supporters of his dictatorship; certainly the family had been among the largest beneficiaries of Batista’s corruption. That wealth had ensured Rivera’s Sorbonne education and the introduction to a cosmopolitan and sophisticated existence. They’d had to lose it, of course, when Castro came to power. And the teenage Rivera had loathed every minute of the supposed socialist posturing, actually wearing ridiculous combat suits, as if they were all macho guerrillas, and reciting nonsense about equality and freedom.

The life he led now was Rivera’s idea of equality and freedom. Realistically he accepted that it would, ultimately, have to end. And with it, he had already decided, would end his diplomatic career. By that time the Zurich account would be larger than it was now—many times larger. At the moment, although he was not irrevocably committed, he favored his boyhood Paris as the city in which he would settle.

It would mean a fairly dramatic upheaval, but he was preparing himself for it. Rivera cared nothing for Estelle, as she cared nothing for him. They’d stayed together for Jorge, whom they both adored. But Paris would have to be the breaking point. It had taken Rivera a long time to admit the fact but now he had, if only to himself. He loved Henrietta and wanted her in Paris, with him. There wouldn’t be any difficulty getting the divorce from Estelle, any more than for Henrietta to divorce her aging husband. The only uncertainty was how Jorge would react. The boy would come to accept it, in time: learn to love Henrietta. There was no question, of course, of Jorge living anywhere but in Paris, with him.

All possible from the biggest arms order he’d ever been called upon to complete.

The ambassador strode across his office to greet the chosen dealer as the man entered, retaining his hand to guide him to a conference area where comfortable oxblood leather chairs and couches were arranged with practised casualness around a series of low tables.

The size of the order had decreed that Pierre Belac had to be the supplier, because he was the biggest Rivera knew. Belac was a neat, gray-suited, gray-haired, clerklike man, in whose blank-eyed, cold company Rivera always felt vaguely uncomfortable. Sometimes he wondered how much profit Belac made from his dealings and would have been staggered had he known.

Observing the preliminary niceties, Rivera said: “A good flight?” Although he knew Belac’s English to be excellent, Rivera spoke in French, in which he was fluent: it pleased him to display the ability.

Belac shrugged. “Brussels is very efficient: I suppose it’s having NATO and the Common Market headquarters to impress.”

“I appreciate your coming so promptly,” Rivera said. He thought, as he had before, that it was difficult to imagine this soft-spoken, unemotional man as one of the largest arms dealers in Europe. Rivera did not think that Belac liked him much.

“I am always prompt where money is involved,” Belac said. Which was the absolute truth. Belac was obsessive about money, consumed above all else in amassing it. He was unmarried and lived in a rented, one-bedroom, walk-up flat near the main square in Brussels. When he wanted sex he paid a whore, and when he was hungry he used a restaurant, usually a cheap one like the prostitutes he patronized. He thought he had a very satisfying life.

Rivera offered the other man the list that had come in the special satchel. Unhurriedly Belac changed his glasses and took from the waistcoat pocket of his suit a thin gold pencil, using it as a marker to guide himself slowly through the list. He gave no facial reaction but his mind was feverishly calculating the profit margin. It was going to be a fantastic deal, one of the best. He smiled up at Rivera once, thinking as he did so how he was going to lead this glistening, perfumed idiot like a lamb to the slaughter. Rivera smiled back, curious how difficult it would be to outnegotiate Belac as he intended to outnegotiate him. That’s all he would do, decided Rivera, nothing more than gain a temporary advantage to profit by. It might be dangerous to consider anything more.

Belac was expressionless when he finally looked up. He said, simply, “Yes.”

Rivera guessed that showing no surprise was an essential part of the carefully maintained demeanor. He said, “So it is possible?”

Belac’s face broke into the closest he could ever come to a smile. “Everything is possible.”

Negotiations were beginning without any preamble, Rivera decided. He said, “But not easy?”

“No difficulty at all with the small arms, rifles, and ammunition. Most of it is available through Czechoslovakia, with no restrictions,” said Belac dismissively. “The guidance systems all contain American technology. COCOM, the committee of all the NATO countries, with the addition of Japan, denies official export to communist bloc countries of dual-use technology, meaning anything that could have military application, which this has. Washington—the Commerce and State departments—keep a very tight lid on that.”

“How can it be done unofficially?” Rivera demanded. Remaining indispensable—and unmovable—required that he knew in advance any problem likely to arise, no matter how small.

“There are companies in Sweden, with the advantage of its neutrality, through which such things can sometimes be arranged,” said Belac. “There will have to be adjustments to End-User Certificates. I have several anstalt companies established in Switzerland that can place the Swedish orders; it will still be difficult to find the necessary end-user destination.”

Trying to show that he was not completely unaware of backdoor channels, Rivera said, “What about Austria?”

“As a cutoff, perhaps,” said Belac, unimpressed but content to let the posturing fool indulge himself if he wished. “But it’s become known to the Americans as a door all too often ajar. I have a situation in Vienna we could utilize, maybe. But for this I think we might have to consider repackaging and transporting through the Middle East. There are a number of accommodating states in the Arab Emirates where smuggling is considered a profession of honor.”

Rivera paused. Was the man proposing the circuitous routing for reasons of security, or to establish the highest price because of its intricacy? To get a higher price, he decided. He said, “What about the communication items?”

“Exactly the same COCOM barrier as with the guidance systems,” the arms dealer said. “Everything listed here contains American technology for which no export license could possibly be obtained.” Which made them for Belac the most difficult and dangerous part of the order, particularly as there already existed in America two criminal indictments against him for evading the restrictions upon such items. Belac decided to delay doing anything about them; he would string Rivera along and maybe not attempt them at all.

“The same routing, then?” the Cuban diplomat asked carelessly.

“I don’t think so, do you?” Belac said at once. “The English have a proverb warning that if all one’s eggs are kept in the same basket, they risk being smashed in an accident.”

Damn! thought Rivera, resenting the lecturing, patronizing tone. He said, “How, then?”

“Japan,” Belac said. “Very discreet, very efficient. We’ll move the communication stuff through Japan. Place the orders direct through the anstalt companies but make sure there’s alternative, disguising cargo carried at the same time.…” The man hesitated, performing his version of a smile again, his mind already calculating the final purchasing figures. “Alternative cargo which you, of course, would have to underwrite. Once at sea, the Swiss holding company will sell the innocent cargo—”

“To a company in Japan,” Rivera said. “So in midvoyage me ship will change destination from Europe to the Far East and any forbidden cargo will disappear?” Belac was patronizing him! The realization did not annoy Rivera. Rather, he was pleased. Play the gullible customer, the Cuban decided.

Belac nodded in agreement. “It will achieve the purpose, but I do not expect we will be able to dispose of the genuine cargo at anything like a profit. A loss is practically certain.”

A loss that Cuba would have to finance to the benefit of the Japanese buyer, Rivera thought; and that Japanese buyer would inevitably be yet another company controlled by Pierre Belac. The grasping pig deserved to be outnegotiated; in its personal, self-rewarding way it would be a fitting penalty for the man’s avarice. Luring the Belgian on, Rivera said, “I accept that a loss would be unavoidable. But then, losses are always budgeted for in business. Which leaves the tanks to be discussed.”

What the hell did this soft-handed poseur know about business! Belac nodded in agreement once more. “Awkward things, tanks. Cumbersome. Practically impossible to break down into any sort of discreetly transportable size. The shell has to be solid, you see?” Belac was enjoying himself, mainly because he knew how much money he was going to make, to within a thousand dollars. Spurred by his greed, Belac had on occasions taken chances and come close to disaster, although he’d always managed, just, to pull back. There wasn’t going to be any danger here. This looked like the easiest deal with which he’d ever become involved. He continued, “But they are available. The United States had a lot mothballed, the majority in the Mojave Desert. The climate is perfect for preservation. Virtually no metal or engine deterioration at all.”

“Available?” queried Rivera.

“Periodically,” the Belgian said. “Fortunately for us, there is to be a surplus sale in the next two or three months.”

Everything seemed to be very easy, Rivera reflected, happy for the man to make his sales pitch. He said, “Fortunate indeed.”

“Providing the interest is not too intense,” Belac qualified. “There hasn’t been any sort of release on the market for more than a year. Most of the important dealers throughout the world will be there, bidding.”

“And the bidding will be high?” Rivera guessed the profit Belac was writing in for himself would be huge.

“It will be a seller’s market, won’t it?” Belac said, answering question with question.

“You’ll need to be able to outbid anyone else?” Rivera asked in apparent further anticipation. He found it difficult to believe that Belac was leading the bargaining precisely in the direction he wanted. It was almost too simple.

“If you are to get what you want,” the Belgian agreed.

“Substantial funds in advance, in fact?”

“Yes,” Belac said. It was too early to start talking figures yet: there was more he could get. Picking up the shopping list, Belac said, “And there would seem to be an omission.”

“Omission?” He would not remain indispensable and unmovable if things were left out, Rivera thought, immediately alarmed.

“Spares,” Belac said. “The stipulation is for a maximum of fifty tanks but nowhere is there a mention of spares for them. You know that something as inconsequential as a failed spark plug can incapacitate a vehicle costing a million dollars?” Appearing at once to realize his error, Belac quickly added, “Probably a lot more than a million dollars.”

“Yes,” Rivera conceded. “I suppose it would. So there must be an additional allowance for spares?”

“Essential,” the Belgian said. “A tank that won’t work is a useless piece of metal, isn’t it?”

Rivera guessed the man had a scrap-metal business to accommodate that eventuality as well. “Spares should be added to the list,” he agreed.

“A very substantial list,” mused the Belgian, shifting the responsibility for guiding the conversation onto Rivera.

“How long, to provide everything?” the diplomat demanded.

Belac humped his shoulders, reluctant to be trapped too easily into a commitment. “Three months,” he said. “Maybe four.”

“There would need to be a completion date,” Rivera pressed. The letter accompanying the order, a letter only Rivera had read, had insisted on six months as a maximum.

“Four,” Belac said.

The moment for which he’d been patiently waiting, Rivera recognized. ‘This is not the business of legally binding contracts,” he said. “What guarantees will exist between us?”

“Mutual, reciprocal trust,” Belac said easily.

Horseshit, thought Rivera. “Would it not be better, perhaps, if I took some of the smaller items elsewhere, spread the order among lesser dealers?”

“No!” Belac said, greedily and too quickly. “I can handle it all. It’s far better to keep it all simple, just between us two.”

“You can guarantee the four months then?”

“My word,” Belac said. He couldn’t be forced to keep it.

“We haven’t yet discussed price,” Rivera said, spread-eagling himself upon the sacrificial stone.

Belac went through the charade of examining the list again, as if he were only then making his calculations. Rivera guessed he had nearly everything priced practically down to the last half-dollar.

“Ninety million,” Belac announced. Hurriedly again, he added, “But that would merely be for the purchases. In addition there would have to be allowances for transportation. Money will also have to be paid out for the switching of the End-User Certificates. So there will need to be provision for extensive commission payments. Say another ten million.”

Most definitely the need for extensive commission payments, thought Rivera; the euphoria swept through him. Even if he modestly maintained his own personal commission at ten percent on the purchase price, that would mean ten million. Keeping any excitement from his voice, Rivera said, “Won’t there also need to be a substantial, instantly available sum to enable the on-the-spot bidding for the tanks?”

“A further fifty million,” Belac declared at once.

Which meant a further five million for him, mentally echoed Rivera, feeling another flush of excitement. He would keep his share to ten percent: on such figures it would be greedy to think of more. On a profit of fifteen million he’d definitely quit, when the deal was completed. “There will be a need to consult, of course,” he said. “But I don’t see the slightest problem with those figures.”

Immediate anger surged through Belac. He’d thought a clear twenty-million-dollar profit, which was what he’d allowed himself, to be as high as he dared push it, but from the other man’s reaction he could have gone even higher! “That’s good to hear,” Belac said, although it hadn’t been good to hear at all.

“I would expect a response within a week.”

“Let’s meet again in a week, then?” The Belgian sat with the complacency of a winner in everything, the anger going. There still might be ways to edge the profit up. And twenty million was a lot of money anyway.

“And this time let me come to you in Brussels,” Rivera offered. The man would feel more confident in his own surroundings.

Belac hesitated briefly. “As you wish.”

Rivera worked for an hour after the Belgian’s departure, setting out accurately everything about the encounter until it came to Belac’s estimate for transportation costs and the necessary bribes. To the Belgian’s figure of ten million Rivera added the majority of the fifteen million he intended diverting to himself. He attached a separate sheet setting out the implacable insistence of his unnamed supplier that all finance and communication should channel through him, in London, with the unnecessary reminder that it was how every successful transaction had been conducted in the past. He personally sealed the communication in the special satchel and personally again ensured it was safely placed within the diplomatic bag. Back in the seclusion of his office, Rivera stood looking out over High Holborn, satisfied with his day’s work. With his personal commission added to the price set by Pierre Belac, the whole deal amounted to $165 million.

How much cocaine would be needed from Colombia for worldwide sales to raise such a sum? Whatever, Rivera knew it would be available. It always was just as there were always buyers. He thought once more how glad he was not to be involved at that end of the chain.

The investigation into Pierre Belac’s illegal movement of American hi-tech prohibited under the Export Administration Act of 1979 was originally begun by the U.S. Customs Authority, the regulatory body for such policing. When the scale and enterprise of the Belgian’s activities were realized, the operation was necessarily extended to include the Federal Bureau of Investigation to work within the United States, and the CIA to liaise externally. It was therefore a CIA task force that monitored the man’s flight from Brussels to London and followed him from Heathrow Airport to the door of the Cuban embassy at 167 High Holborn. A number of photographs were taken of Belac entering the building and more of his leaving. He was followed back to the airport, and on the returning aircraft a CIA officer sat just two rows behind in the economy-class section.

A complete report was included in that night’s diplomatic dispatch from the U.S. embassy in the Belgian capital to Washington. A cross-reference noted that the report should be considered in conjunction with a report upon Jose Gaviria Rivera that was being separately pouched from London that same night.