O'Farrell's Law

FIVE

AT THE end of the O’Hare concourse there was a liquor booth and O’Farrell stopped and bought a bottle of Bombay gin and some screw-topped tonic.

Jill stood apart from him, frowning, and when he went back to her she said, “What did you do that for?”

“Ellen doesn’t usually have any drink in the apartment.”

“So?”

“So I thought it might be an idea to take some in.”

“Why? We never have before. Who needs it?”

“It might be an idea, that’s all.” O’Farrell’s voice was weary rather than irritated; trained always to subdue any extreme emotion—and certainly anger—he never fought with Jill. In the early days of their marriage she’d sometimes tried to provoke arguments, to blow off steam, but he’d never responded, and over the years she’d stopped bothering. She’d never openly said so, but he guessed she despised him for that, too. Another clerklike weakness, unwillingness to fight on any level.

He’d set up the car rental ahead of time, so all the documentation was ready. O’Farrell started to put the luggage on the rear seat but then changed his mind, stowing it in the trunk, so the plastic bag containing the liquor was out of sight.

They drove for a long time without speaking, and then Jill said, “You all right?”

“What sort of question is that?”

“The sort of question a wife can ask her husband.”

“Of course I’m all right. I’m fine. Why?”

“I just wondered.”

“There must be a reason.” That had been the time to drop it, not persist with any further challenge.

“You’ve just seemed kind of strange a couple of times lately, that’s all.”

“Strange like what?” Stop it! he thought, let go!

Beside him the woman shrugged. “Nothing I can point at. Why don’t we forget it?”

O’Farrell opened his mouth and then closed it again, taking her advice. Damn the stupidity of buying the booze. She was right; who needed it?

Ellen had a ground-floor apartment on the Evanston side of Chicago, not quite close enough to the lake to be cripplingly expensive but not far enough away to be reasonable, either. She and Billy must have been watching through the window, because they both came running out before O’Farrell and Jill got completely from the car. There were kisses and hugs, and Billy kept thrusting an electric toy into O’Farrell’s face until he paid attention. Closer, O’Farrell saw it was a spacecraft that worked off batteries, and that it could be manipulated to turn into a space figure as well. Billy said there was an entire fleet of different designs.

Inside the apartment, O’Farrell offered his daughter the plastic bag and announced, “Supplies!”

Ellen accepted it without any surprise and said, “Great!” and O’Farrell was relieved.

Ellen had moved the boy into her room. O’Farrell hung up his garment bag and stored Jill’s small case where Billy slept, a bedroom festooned with posters and with toys neatly in a box, a catcher’s mitt uppermost. There was a plastic cover over the video machine and its game-playing keyboard. O’Farrell guessed Ellen had tidied up the room before their arrival.

Outside Billy was on the living-room floor, squatting with his legs splayed beneath him but actually sitting, the way kids his age were able to do. Jill and Ellen were in the kitchen, talking soft-voiced by the coffeemaker. As O’Farrell entered, he heard Ellen say, “Mother, I’ve told you: you’re panicking about nothing!”

“I don’t regard it as nothing!” Jill said.

‘There’ve been incidents and so there was a precautionary meeting, that’s all!” said Ellen. “The school has behaved very responsibly and I’m grateful.”

O’Farrell stood without intruding into the conversation, comparing the two women. They were very similar, unquestionably mother and daughter. And Jill stood up to the comparison very well, O’Farrell judged, proudly. Maybe just a little thicker around the hips but still pert-breasted, as firm as her daughter. Stomach was as flat, too: she worked out at the clinic, he knew, practicing the fitness exercises with which she treated others. Certainly as clear-skinned and practically as facially unlined as Ellen, and only he knew that Jill needed a hairdresser’s help now to keep her hair matchingly blond. Very beautiful; very beautiful indeed. He felt a positive jump of emotion, a stomach churn: he loved her so much.

“What are the police doing about it?” Jill persisted, setting out the cups.

“The best they can.”

“What’s that?” O’Farrell came in.

Ellen gave her father a sad smile, wishing he had not asked. “Just that,” she conceded lamely. “One of the drug officers talked at the meeting. Said it was easy enough to pick off the street pushers—which they do, of course—but that they’re replaced the following day. It’s like a pyramid, he said: if they get lucky, they might catch the guy from whom the street dealer gets his supplies, but rarely the one above him. And hardly ever the real organizers, the guys who are making millions … billions.”

“You know what I think!” Jill said with sudden vehemence. “I think they ought to kill the bastards! Make it a capital offense and execute them; no appeal, no excuse, nothing. Dead!”

“They do in some parts of the world, apparently,” said the younger woman.

O’Farrell supposed it was easy for Jill to feel as she did. He said, “Is there anything we can do?”

Ellen smiled at him again, gratefully this time. “Nothing, in a practical sense. Just knowing you’re around always helps.”

“We’re always around,” O’Farrell said sincerely.

Ellen said she still hadn’t done any grocery shopping, but Billy protested he didn’t want to do something as boring as that, so the two women went off in the rented car, with Jill driving, and O’Farrell used Ellen’s car, another Toyota, to take Billy to the theme park nearer into town. He chose Lake Shore Drive because it was a more attractive route than remaining inland, and at the traffic light at its commencement he had to snatch up the emergency brake as well as pump the footbrake to get it to stop. He gasped, frightened, only inches from the car in front. When the lights changed, he set off carefully, taking the inside lane and testing the footbrake again when he was clear enough of following traffic. The only way to stop satisfactorily was to start pumping a long way from where he wanted to halt. He pulled over into a bus stop and got out, able without lifting the hood to hear the whine and shuddering unevenness of the engine.

Back in the car he said to the boy, “Things don’t seem too good with the car.”

“Mom says she’s going to get it fixed,” said Billy.

“When?”

“Soon.”

O’Farrell drove very slowly, ignoring the horn blasts of protest, and found a service station just at the beginning of the high-rise area. The manager insisted the work would be impossible to do at such short notice, and O’Farrell said it was an emergency and that he guessed it would involve overtime working on the weekend, and after thirty minutes of persuasion the man agreed to take it in. It took another thirty minutes for them to check through the work necessary, the manager clearly impressed with O’Farrell’s knowledge of engines.

“Four hundred is only an estimate, you understand?” the mechanic warned.

“Whatever,” said O’Farrell. It gave them carte blanche to rip him off, but so what? The only consideration was getting the vehicle roadworthy over the weekend.

They took a cab to the theme park and O’Farrell indulged Billy on whatever ride he wanted and then let himself be tugged to a store practically next door to be shown the range of electric space vehicles. He bought one that changed from a vehicle to a warrior, like the one Billy already had.

On the way to the park, O’Farrell had seen a restaurant with an open deck stretching toward the lake, so he took Billy back there to eat. They sat outside, the silver-glinting lake to their left, the upthrust fingers of the Chicago skyscrapers to their right. Billy chose a cheeseburger and fries with a large Coke and insisted his new toy should remain on the table between them. O’Farrell ordered gin and tonic and tuna on rye; by the time the food came his glass was empty, so he ordered another.

“Hear there’s some nasty things going on at school,” O’Farrell said.

“Huh?” The child’s mouth was full of fries.

“Mommy had to come to talk to some people this week?”

“Oh that,” Billy said dismissively.

“What was it about?”

“Drugs,” the boy announced flatly. He moved the toy along the table, toward the Coke container, making a noise like explosions.

“You know what drugs are?”

“Sure,” Billy said, attention still on the spacecraft.

Not yet nine, thought O’Farrell: long-lashed, blue-eyed, red-cheeked with uncombed hair over his forehead and his shirttail poking curiously over his belt, like it always did, and he knew what drugs were. And not yet nine! He said, “What?”

“Stuff that makes you feel funny.”

“Who told you that?”

“Miss James.”

“Your teacher?”

“Uh-huh.” He was biting into his cheeseburger now, ketchup on either side of his mouth.

“What did she say?”

Billy had to swallow before he could reply. “That we were to tell her if anyone said we should try.”

“Would you tell her?”

“Boom, boom, boom,” went Billy, attacking the Coke container. “Guess so,” he said.

“Just guess so! Has anyone ever said you should do it?”

“Nope. Can I have a vanilla ice cream with chocolate topping now?”

O’Farrell summoned the waitress and added another gin and tonic to the order. “You know anyone who has tried it?”

“Couple of guys in the next grade, I think.”

Ellen had talked about Nancy Reagan seeking pledges from nine-year-olds, O’Farrell remembered. He said, “What happened?”

“They sniffed something. Made them go funny, like I said.” The toy ceased being a spacecraft and was turned into a warrior so that it could attack from the ground.

“What happened to them?”

“They had to go to the principal. Now they’re in a program.”

“You know what a program is?”

“Sure,” Billy said, letting his warrior retreat. “It’s when you go and they keep on about you not doing it.”

It was a good enough description from someone so young. O’Farrell said, “You love me?”

Billy looked directly at him for the first time. “Of course I love you.”

“Grandma too? And Mommy most of all?”

“Sure. Dad too.”

What about Patrick? O’Farrell thought for the first time. He’d have to ask Ellen. “I want you to make me a promise, a promise that you’ll keep if you love us all like you say you do.”

“Okay,” the child said brightly. The warrior became a spacecraft again.

“If anyone ever comes up to you, at school or anywhere, and tries to get you to buy something that will make you go funny, you promise me you’ll say no and go at once and tell Miss James or Mommy? You promise me that?”

“Can I have another Coke? Just a small one.”

O’Farrell caught the waitress’s eye again and insisted, “You going to promise me that?”

“ ’Course I am. That’s easy.”

“And mean it? Really mean it?”

“Sure.”

O’Farrell felt a sweep of helplessness but decided against pressing any further. Maybe he shouldn’t have tried at all. He hadn’t suggested to Ellen that he should discuss it with the child; perhaps there was some established way of talking it through—something evolved by a child psychiatrist—and he was being counterproductive by mentioning it at all. He felt another sweep of helplessness.

O’Farrell considered stopping at the service station on the way back to Ellen’s apartment, but decided against it; there did not seem to be any point. The women were already home, hunched over more coffee cups at the kitchen table with the debris of a sandwich lunch between them.

“Steak for dinner, courtesy of Grandma!” Ellen announced as they entered.

“Great!” Billy said. “I got a new spaceship! Look!

“Gramps bought it for me. And a vanilla ice cream with a chocolate top!”

“Looks like our time for being spoiled, Billy boy,” Ellen said.

The child scurried into the living room to locate the previous toy and begin a galactic battle; almost at once there came lots of boom, boom, booms and a noise that sounded something like a throat clearing.

O’Farrell said, “Your car’s in the garage.”

“You had an accident!”

His daughter’s instant response caused a burn of annoyance. Never get mad, always stay cool, he thought. He said, “I could have. It’s a miracle you haven’t. That car’s a wreck: at least five thousand miles over any service limit! Didn’t you know that?”

“Been busy,” said Ellen. She spoke looking down, her bottom lip nipped between her teeth, and O’Farrell recognized the expression from when she’d been young and been caught doing something wrong.

“Darling!” he said, perfectly in control but trying to sound outraged despite that, wanting to get through to her. “On at least one wheel, possibly two, there are scarcely any brake shoes left at all. Which is hardly important anyway because there was no fluid in the drum to operate them anyway. Two plugs aren’t operating at all, your engine is virtually dry of oil, and the carburetor is so corroded the cover has actually split. Both your left tires, front and back, are shiny bald, and your alignment is so far out on the front that any new tire would be that way inside a month.”

“Intended to get it fixed right away,” Ellen said, head still downcast. “The brakes are okay, providing you know how to work them.”

“That car’s a deathtrap and you know it!” O’Farrell insisted. “So when was it last in the shop?”

“Can’t remember,” Ellen said, stilted still.

“It hasn’t been serviced, has it? Not for months!”

“No.”

There was a loud silence in the tiny kitchen. Remembering something else, O’Farrell said, “What about Patrick?”

“What about Patrick?” his daughter echoed.

“You told him about this scare at Billy’s school?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s all it is, a scare,” Ellen said. “Nothing’s happened to Billy.”

Don’t be sidetracked, thought O’Farrell. “Patrick’s got visitation rights, hasn’t he?”

“You know he has.”

“Tell me the custody arrangement.”

“You know the custody arrangement!” Ellen said angrily.

“Tell me!”

“Alternative weekends,” Ellen said. “Vacation by arrangement.”

“So Billy was with his father last weekend?”

“No,” Ellen admitted tightly.

“And the time before that?”

“No.” Tighter still.

“Why not?”

A shrug.

“Why not!”

“Patrick’s got problems; he got laid off.”

“From the loan company?”

Ellen shook her head. “That was the job before last. He was working on commission, with a group of guys, trying to sell apartments in a renewal development downtown.”

“But he got laid off?”

Ellen nodded.

“When?”

She shrugged uncertainly. “I’m not sure. Three months ago, maybe four. I’m not sure.”

Jill had been listening, her head moving backward and forward like a spectator’s at a tennis match. She said abruptly, “Honey, we’ve been up here twice in the last four months! Why didn’t you tell us?”

“My business,” Ellen said, little girl again.

“No, honey,” Jill said gently. “Our business.”

“It was all right at first. He kept seeing Billy and …” she trailed away.

“And what!” demanded O’Farrell, guessing already.

“And the payments,” Ellen finished.

“How much is he behind?”

There was another uncertain shoulder move. “Two months.”

“Alimony and child support?” O’Farrell pressed.

Ellen nodded. “Actually it’s three months.”

“And when did he last want to see Billy?”

“It’s not that he doesn’t want to see him! He and Jane have two kids of their own now; he’s got a lot of priorities.”

“You and Billy are his prior commitments!” O’Farrell insisted. “He married you first. He had Billy first. He owes you first.”

“He asked me to give him a little time, just to sort himself out. Jane’s still jealous of me, he says.”

“She’s jealous of you, for Christ’s sake!” Jill erupted. “She was his mistress for a year before she became pregnant to make him choose between the two of you. And you’re doing her favors! Come on!”

“Leave it, Mom. Please leave it!”

“You could have died in that car,” O’Farrell said. “Been badly hurt at least.”

“I was saving, to get it done. But I didn’t want to fall behind with the mortgage.”

“Have you?” O’Farrell asked. He’d put up the down payment for Ellen for the apartment, believing she could manage the monthly installments.

There was a jerking nod of her head. “Only this month.”

“You still make the same?” O’Farrell asked. Ellen worked as a medical receptionist; she’d cut short her training to be a physiotherapist like her mother in order to marry Patrick. Billy had been born nine calendar months later.

“It averages around a thousand a month; sometimes I work overtime and it comes to a little more.”

“You can’t afford to live here on a thousand a month!” Jill said. “You can’t afford to live anywhere on a thousand a month. You’ve got to get Patrick’s payments going through the courts, like you should have done in the first place.”

“You can’t get what’s not there.”

“How do you know it’s not there?” O’Farrell asked.

“I know.”

‘Tell me something,” Jill said. “You surely don’t think there’s a chance of you and Patrick getting back together again, do you? He’s got two other children by her!”

The girl’s shoulders went up and down listlessly. “I don’t know.”

“Would you get back together if he asked you?”

Another shoulder movement. “I don’t know.”

O’Farrell and Jill frowned at each other over their daughter’s head, shocked by the lassitude. Each tried to think of something appropriate to say and failed.

It was Jill who spoke, with forced briskness, trying to break the mood. “Why don’t I make supper?”

Without asking either woman O’Farrell fixed drinks for all three of them. Jill took hers without any critical reaction and didn’t comment or even look when he made himself another before they sat down. Largely for the child’s benefit, they made light conversation during the meal, and afterward O’Farrell played spacemen with Billy while the women cleared away. The boy was allowed to watch an hour of television, and while Ellen and Jill were bathing him before bed O’Farrell made a third drink, a large one, and kept it defiantly in his hand when Jill came back into the room. She didn’t appear to notice it.

By unspoken agreement Ellen’s problems weren’t raised again during the evening, but the subject hung between them, like a room divider, all the time.

That night, in Billy’s bed, lying on her back in the darkness, Jill said, “Christ, what a mess!”

“It’s not too bad, not yet,” O’Farrell said, trying to be realistic.

“It’s not too good, either.”

“I tried to talk to Billy at lunchtime about drugs.”

He felt her head turn toward him in the darkness. “And?”

“He spoke about it,” O’Farrell tried to explain. “This little kid tried to speak about it like he knew what we were talking about and all the time he was playing fucking Star Wars!”

“She’s got to go to an attorney, get the proper court payments set up,” Jill insisted. “I don’t give a damn how bad his own situation is. I don’t see why Ellea and Billy should suffer because of it; he created it all.”

“Yes,” O’Farrell agreed.

“She married too young,” Jill said abruptly.

“The same age as us.”

“I got you; she got a bastard.”

What words would she use if she really knew? O’Farrell said, “Maybe we were wrong, making it possible for her to buy the apartment. It’s a hell of a drain on what she earns.”

“What can we do, apart from pressure her about a lawyer?”

“I don’t know,” admitted O’Farrell.

“What about money? Couldn’t we make her some sort of allowance?”

Not if he went to Petty and said he wanted to quit. “Yes,” O’Farrell promised. “If we can get her to accept it, we could make her an allowance. We’ll definitely do that.”

“I love you,” Jill said.

Would she if she really knew? he wondered again.

CIA surveillance picked up the Cuban ambassador the moment he left High Holborn. The alert that he was probably making for London airport was radioed from the trailing car when the official vehicle gained the motorway and confirmed when it turned off onto the Heathrow spur. The observer risked following closely behind Rivera at the check-in desk, to discover his destination, but it was the driver who took over to purchase a ticket and board the plane to Brussels, to avoid any chance recognition. Before the aircraft cleared English airspace watchers were already assembling at Brussels, waiting: the CIA officer from London headed back immediately upon arrival, again to avoid possible identification.

Rivera took a taxi into the center of the capital and went through an effort at trail clearing that earned the professionals’ sneers, it was so amateurish. They kept him easily under observation until he entered Pierre Belac’s nondescript office. The Agency had not risked installing any listening devices there. Had they done so, they would have heard Belac ask for a downpayment of thirty-five million dollars and Rivera agreeing without any argument, with an added, entrapping assurance that if Belac had any additional expenditures in excess of this advance sum he would be immediately recompensed. Even with a listening device, they could not have picked up Belac’s reaction, a repeat of his earlier and intense irritation at not having pitched the demand higher at their embassy meeting.

At least, Belac reasoned at once, he had the authority to buy in addition and in excess of his thirty-five-million-dollar advance. Which he resolved to do; he would purchase a vast amount of Czech small arms and ten of the fifty tanks that were not coming from America but from a German arms dealer who had them available for sale. They were far cheaper than he’d have to pay for the American vehicles; Belac guessed $10,000 a tank, although, of course, he wouldn’t tell Rivera that. Belac reckoned that as he was taking the risk, by using his own money, then his should be the unexpected and unshared profit.

Rivera remained with the arms dealer for less than an hour, walking back to the center of town, where he caught a taxi to the airport, boarding the midafternoon plane to London. There he was followed back into the city. He did not go to his Hampstead home but to a mews house in Pimlico that was already logged on the CIA’s watch list. It belonged to an aging, self-made English newspaper magnate named Sir William Blanchard. Inquiries showed that he was in Ottawa negotiating fresh newsprint prices with Canadian manufacturers. Lady Henrietta Blanchard, twenty-three years her husband’s junior, was at home, though.

It was nine A.M. the following morning before Rivera left.

SIX

THE HEAD of the CIA’s Plans Directorate was a barrel-chested, bull-necked Irishman named Gus McCarthy. He was thickly red-haired and had a heavily freckled face, with freckles on the back of his hands as well; they were also matted with more red hair. He looked like a barroom brawler—and was able to be—but his looks belied the man. He was a strategist capable of intricate and manipulative schemes, never concentrating upon an immediate operation to the exclusion of how it could be extended and utilized to its fullest advantage. He was perfectly matched by his deputy, Hank Sneider, a precise, slight man who had the ability to recognize the direction of McCarthy’s thoughts almost before the man completely explained them, and correct and improve upon the details. Their nicknames within the Langley headquarters were Mutt and Jeff. They knew it and weren’t offended; there were benefits to being underestimated.

“So what have we got?” McCarthy demanded, not seeking an answer. “One of the largest arms dealers in Europe, a Cuban ambassador who likes the good life, and a British newspaper owner.”

“I think to include the newspaper owner is confusing,” Sneider said. “Blanchard isn’t involved. Rivera’s just humping the wife is all.”

“Maybe not all,” McCarthy mused. “Couldn’t we use that? Blanchard’s got a hell of an empire: television stations and newspapers and magazines here as well as in Europe. Get ourselves a corner there and we’d have an incredible outlet for whatever we wanted to plant.”

They were in McCarthy’s seventh-floor office in the CIA building, high enough for a view of the Potomac glistening its way through the tree line. Sneider ignored the view, pouring coffee for both of them from the permanently steaming Cona machine. McCarthy consumed a minimum of ten cups a day. Sneider carried McCarthy’s mug back to the man’s desk and said, “It’s worth thinking through. But we could only achieve that by pressuring the old guy. The shit we’ve got is on the woman.”

“How much of a lever does she have on her old man?”

“Get things published the way we want, darling, or hubbie gets to know all the sordid details?” Sneider suggested.

“Something like that,” McCarthy agreed, appreciatively sipping. “Be nice to get a picture of her with her ass in the air.”

“Rivera’s too, in tandem.”

“They discreet?”

“Don’t appear to be, particularly. Rivera shacked up at the family home when the old guy was in Canada and she often accompanies him to polo matches. That’s his sport, polo.”

“So what’s that?” McCarthy asked, another rhetorical question. “Sheer couldn’t-give-a-damn carelessness? Arrogance? What?”

“Maybe Blanchard knows and doesn’t mind either,” Sneider speculated. “You know how it is with some old guys: all they want is a decoration on their arm and maybe an occasional feel in the sack to make sure it’s still there and working and the rest of the time the bimbo can party with whom she likes.”

“Difficult to turn that into an advantage,” McCarthy complained.

“What about cutting the deck a different way?” Sneider asked.

“Rivera?”

“Not exactly leading the life of José the Cane Cutter, is he?”

“What’s the objective?”

“Spy in the court of King Castro?”

“To be that Rivera’s got to be back in Havana,” McCarthy said. “Won’t work. To maneuver his recall we’d have to spread the word about his high life. So he goes back in disgrace and wouldn’t be in a position to give us anything anyway. And when we show him the pictures of himself and the lady, he says, ‘She was a good lay, so what?’ “

“So?”

“We divide it,” McCarthy decided. “Let’s message London to get as much dirt as possible on the two of them but not to spook Rivera. And run him and Belac quite separately.”

“Parallel surveillance is going to tie up a lot of manpower.”

“Belac’s big; the biggest. It could be worth it.”

“We going to seek British help?”

“No,” McCarthy said at once. “If it’s going to be big, let’s keep it nice and tight, just to ourselves.”

“Then the way in is through Belac,” the other man said. “There’s already a bunch of stuff on the guy; we’ve got a good handle on his sources. If we can find out what he wants, then it’ll give us an idea what Rivera could be ordering.”

“Belac’s the biggest?”

“Yes,” Sneider said, trying to tune in to the direction of McCarthy’s thinking.

“So logically whatever Rivera—whatever Cuba—wants is substantial,” McCarthy said. “If it were just the usual run-of-the-mill stuff, there’s a dozen smaller guys they could have bought from. Belac means it’s a huge order and that it’s the latest state-of-the-art matériel.”

“You talking Apocalypse?”

McCarthy got up to pour his own coffee this time, looking inquiringly toward his deputy, who shook his head in refusal. McCarthy returned to his high-backed chair and said, “The days of missile crises are over. I think Havana’s looking south, not north. We wont know until we get some idea just how substantial, but it’s got to be more than continuing support in Nicaragua; much more.”

Sneider gestured to indicate the building in which they were sitting. “Time to start spreading the news?”

“Not yet,” the Plans Director said. “There’s not enough news to spread; just speculation. But it’s definitely worth expending the manpower.”

“Most definitely,” agreed Sneider, all doubt gone now.

“And when we get it, we make the most extensive possible use of it,” McCarthy said. “Ripples upon ripples upon ripples.”

O’Farrell had expected his offer of financial support to meet a stronger argument from Ellen and decided with Jill that their daughter’s almost immediate acceptance showed just how desperate she had become. They agreed on $400 a month, and Billy had clung to his mother’s leg and wanted to know why she was crying. The car repairs cost $550, and before they left Chicago Jill went grocery shopping again, stocking up the cupboards and the deep-freeze. During their last conversation, after Sunday-morning church, Ellen said she’d sec her lawyer before the month was out.

They wrote as well as telephoned now, and that first week O’Farrell sent a long letter to John, in Phoenix, aware that the boy would not be able to offer Ellen any financial support but suggesting that his sister might like support of another kind, like a call or a letter. He didn’t say it outright but hoped his son would infer that the occasional checks would not be quite as much as they had been in the past. There was a reply practically by return. John said that what was happening in Billy’s school was nothing unusual and that they weren’t to worry. Jeff had actually come home one day and talked about being offered marijuana; he and Beth were pretty sure he hadn’t tried it but couldn’t be one-hundred-percent certain. John promised to write to Chicago every week, the way they were doing now, and added a postscript that the checks had always embarrassed him anyway and in the future he wouldn’t expect anything at all from his father.

To establish—and hopefully to go on improving—his great-grandfather’s archive, O’Farrell had written to still-existing newspapers throughout Kansas that had been publishing during the man’s lifetime and even wrote further afield, to papers in Colorado and Oklahoma. In addition he approached as many historical societies and museums as he could locate, asking them to publicize his on-going search for information about his ancestor in any newsletter or publication they issued.

By coincidence there were two responses within two weeks of his returning from Chicago. A historical society in Wichita said one of their researchers had come across references to a Charles O’Farrell as a teenage scout in a wagon train and asked if he were prepared to spend fifty dollars on a more specific investigation. O’Farrell replied at once that he was, enclosing his check.

An Amarillo dealer in early-American weaponry wrote saying that he was on the mailing list of every historical society in five nearby states. The man had a mint-condition Colt of the model and caliber he believed O’Farrell’s great-grandfather would have used. Did O’Farrell want to buy it to form part of his collection?

O’Farrell replied to that by return as well, politely rejecting the offer. Even before the manner of his parents’ death, he’d considered it unthinkable to have a gun in his house, even an antique from which the firing pin had probably been removed.

At church that weekend, O’Farrell prayed that Billy would be kept safe, knowing that Jill would be praying the same. Additionally O’Farrell prayed for himself, asking to be excused any more assignments. He was made uncomfortable by the reading, which was from St Luke: “Judge not and ye shall not be judged.”

SEVEN

IT HAD been Rivera’s father who’d been the sports fisherman, pursuing the blue marlin and the other big-game fish off the Keys and the Grand Bahama Bank. Rivera had fished, too, quite competently, but he’d never gotten the pleasure from it that the older man had. He’d learned the principles, of course; the use of the proper bait to catch the best fish. And carried that principle on. Which was why he’d initially, unquestioningly, advanced so much money to Belac, with the assurance that any additional personal expenditure would be instantly recompensed. And Belac had responded fishlike. But not like a marlin. Like a greedy, eat-all shark. His father had despised shark as game fish.

The unscheduled meeting was at Belac’s request. The arms dealer came confidently into the London embassy office and at once, proudly, announced, “I want you to see what I’ve achieved.” He produced a list but read from it himself. ‘Two hundred Kalashnikov rifles, with six thousand rounds of ammunition. One hundred Red Eye missiles and two hundred Stinger missiles. Three hundred assorted Czech handguns and three thousand rounds of matching ammunition. There are five hundred grenades and two hundred antipersonnel land mines.…” The man looked up, giving a self-satisfied smile. “And ten tanks. All en route, aboard ship, without the need to go through Japan or the Arab Emirates.” He smiled further. “Your original request only listed five armored personnel carriers. I have secured fifteen, if you wish to increase the order.” He’d already put down a deposit, from his own money again.

“I will check back with my people,” Rivera promised. By how much, he wondered, had Belac overextended himself?

“And not just that,” Belac continued briskly. “I have two thousand jungle-camouflaged uniforms and three thousand of the latest type of army boot. Also practically an unlimited supply of infantry matériel—webbing, field equipment, stuff like that.”

“Again, I’ll check.” Gently prompting, Rivera said, “What about the remaining tanks?”

“The auction is still to come,” the Belgian said. “I will be bidding, of course, through an agent.”

“And the electronic systems?” pressed the diplomat.

“I have already established through a Swiss anstalt the purchasing route with a company on the outskirts of Stockholm—”

Rivera refused him the escape. “We discussed the method at our first meeting.”

Belac nodded, in apparent recollection. “An order has been placed through Stockholm,” he assured. “Which brings us to the point of my coming here today—”

“Money?” cut in Rivera, again.

“The request is for a VAX-11/78,” Belac said, in another unnecessary reminder. “That’s the system employed within the U.S. Pentagon itself! It is going to be very expensive; maybe more than we first budgeted for.”

“It’s precisely because the VAX is the Pentagon system that we want it,” Rivera said.

“Expensive, like I said,” repeated Belac.

“How much?”

“I have committed a great deal of my own money, on the basis of our understanding,” Belac said generally. “I shall need another thirty-five million working capital at least.” He spoke as if the sum were unimportant. He looked at Rivera in open-faced, almost innocent expectancy.

Rivera smiled back just as innocently. “I am surprised at the need for such a large payment, so quickly after the first advance of thirty-five million.”

The arms dealer faltered, just slightly. He gestured toward the list between them and said, “I have just told you what has been purchased and shipped. Three vessels have had to be chartered. Commissions paid. Deposits made, for other material you want.”

“Like the VAX communication equipment?” Rivera persisted.

There was a further hesitation. “I may need the full time allowance there,” Belac conceded.

“Wouldn’t you agree that on my part I have been very generous in the agreement we have reached?”

“Yes,” Belac allowed doubtfully, unsure of the direction the ambassador was taking, but not liking it, whatever it was.

“Particularly in not insisting upon there being a penalty clause understood between us, in the event of nondelivery of any of the items you’ve guaranteed to supply,” Rivera continued, laying more bait.

“Yes,” Belac said again. The Cuban was performing for his own benefit. In what public court did the fool imagine suing to recover any penalty sum?

“I think one should be established,” Rivera announced. “Here, today.”

“What have you in mind?” Belac asked, tolerantly going along with the diplomat.

“A percentage,” Rivera said. In the excitement of the moment Rivera was unable precisely to calculate the additional, interest-earning profit to himself, through whom all funding had to flow and in whose account any withheld money would remain, if Belac failed to keep to his own established timetable.

“I don’t understand,” Belac complained, his complacency wavering.

“Our agreement was upon an expenditure of a hundred and fifty million?”

“Yes,” accepted Belac, fully alert now.

“Of which thirty-five million has already been advanced?”

“And spent,” Belac insisted at once. “Not only spent but greatly exceeded.”

“I propose there should be a ten-percent withholding upon all future advances, that sum to be paid as and when the articles for which it is committed are delivered.”

Belac was too urbane a negotiator to burst out with an instant rejection but it was very close. Icily controlled, he said, “That’s not acceptable, under any circumstances, Excellency. As I have made clear, I have already gone to considerable personal expense and effort, committed myself to great expense with other people. In the business I follow, everything depends upon personal reputation.”

And why you’ve no alternative but to agree, thought Rivera. He said, “Which was why the thirty-five million was advanced, surely!”

“An advance on account,” Belac said, unsettled now. “And from it I have extended other advances on account, accounts that my suppliers expect me to honor in full and on time.”

“Exactly!” Rivera said as the hook jarred upward. “Your suppliers expect you to fulfill your commitments on time, I expect you to fulfill your commitments on time. We’re in agreement then!” It was the moment for the patronizing attitudes to be reversed. It was the overextended Belac who would have to dance to the tune he played, accepting what payments he chose to advance. Rivera knew from other deals how these men worked, interchanging and swopping weaponry, the word-of-mouth agreements having rigidly to be met. And how violently disputes were resolved, if they weren’t. He remained curious at Belac’s apparent hesitation over the VAX equipment, feeling a stir of unease. Did the Belgian intend to supply it? Or merely to provide enough of the other things to make a substantial profit but leave him exposed for the difficult but essential computer? A further, essential reason to withhold the money.

He’d been loo confident of die limitless money continuing, Belac admitted to himself. Now he was trapped, with timed deliveries that had to be paid for. Desperately, vowing somehow to repay in kind the smirking bastard sitting opposite him, Belac said. “Without another advance of thirty-five million, everything collapses. My suppliers simply won’t deal with me.”

His voice had lost its smooth, imperturbable tone. He waited, but the Cuban said nothing. Practically pleading, Belac said, “I have given personal guarantees. Payments are arranged on fixed dates. We agreed you would immediately cover any additional, necessary expenditure, for God’s sake!”

Make up the shortfall from your own funds; you’re rich enough, thought Rivera. He said, “I’ll advance the next thirty-five million, less the ten percent withholding, to protect my delivery being on time.…” He allowed just the right degree of hesitation. “Or would you have me change the whole arrangement? Withdraw some of the requirements from you and spread them to other dealers: the VAX computer particularly, if you are finding that difficult.”

“No!” Belac said too quickly. If that happened, some of the subsidiary dealers with whom he’d made arrangements would realize the purchases were being spread and would imagine him to be in difficulties, which he was. And would be in greater difficulty when they demanded their money immediately, frightened he had a cash shortage. What Rivera was allowing him—$31,500,000—would just be enough to cover the commitments for which he’d given his word. Still too quickly, he went on, “I agree to the arrangement.”

“I’m glad we’ve had this meeting,” the ambassador said. “I feel it has clarified a number of points.” The main one being that you can’t contemptuously treat me like some cigar-chewing peasant.

“I think so, too,” Belac said, wanting to recover. “I think there are other points that maybe need clarifying, too.”

“Such as?”

“That mutual trust we spoke about,” Belac said heavily. “I think it would be very unfortunate if there stopped being mutual trust between us.”

“So do I.” An open threat, Rivera recognized, uneasily.

“It would be regrettable for any other sort of penalties to be considered by either of us, don’t you think?” Belac said.

“I’m not sure I’m following this conversation,” Rivera said. His voice remained quite firm, he decided, gratefully.

The Belgian sat regarding the other man without speaking for several moments. He said, “It is important that we understand each other.”

“There’s no misunderstanding on my part,” Rivera assured him. “I sincerely hope there’s none upon yours.”

“There won’t be, from now on,” the Belgian said.

The encounter concluded, Belac’s departure duly noted by the CIA surveillance team, witli Rivera firmly believing himself to be the victor.

Which he had been, far more than he knew.

Belac had done nothing about obtaining the American-manufactured, American-equipped computer system listed among the top ten items barred from export to any communist country.

Belatedly Belac approached a hi-tech consultant in California through whom he had previously dealt—always by telephone or letter—for technical advice upon such things. And upon the consultant’s advice Belac finally did approach Sweden. The company was named Epetric, was headquartered in the very heart of Stockholm, and was regarded as the most amenable to rule bending as well as one of the best hi-tech corporations in the country.

Precisely because it was such a state-of-the-art organization as well as being so amenable to rule bending, Epetric was prominent on the list of suspected technological infringers not just in the CIA but in the U.S. Customs Service as well. The combined pressure of both agencies resulted in Washington warning Stockholm that unless they did more to control the technology flood. Swedish industries, and particularly companies like Epetric, would be denied by federal legislation the legal American computer exports upon which the industry, worldwide, depended.

Stockholm resented the threat but could not deny the hemorrhage, and the cabinet decided that the country had to show itself a less open technological doorway.

Nine months before Belac approached Epetric—months, in fact, before there had ever been contact between the Belgian and José Gaviria Rivera—Swedish customs investigators had succeeded in suborning an informant within the contracts and finance department of the Epetric company.

His name was Lars Henstrom.

Paul Rodgers felt life was sweet; sweet as a little nut. Sweeter in fact. What was sweeter than a little nut? Angie maybe. She sure as hell was sweet; tits she had—no silicone, either—made those bimbos in the skin mags look like grandmothers or bag ladies. And not just the tits. Rodgers, who’d bucked a few in his time flying in Nam and then for Florida, before it went bust, reckoned there hadn’t been a trick invented in the sack that Angie didn’t know; guessed she might have invented a few of them.

And not just the joy of Angie, since he’d wised up. There was the paid-for-cash condo in Naples, as an investment, and the paid-for-cash beach house where they lived at Fort Lauderdale, and the paid-for-cash Jaguar XK6, the latest convertible model, and those discreet safe-deposit boxes in Miami and Tampa and Dallas and New York, everything nicely spread around, solid as those unquestioning banks. Yes sir, life was sweet; sweet as a little …

Rodgers didn’t bother to finish the thought, frowning at the cumulus buildup ahead, a boiling, churning foam of blackened cloud already split apart by lightning. The forecast—the best he could get, that was, before lifting off from the dirt strip outside Cartagena—had warned of occasional seasonal turbulence. Sure as fuck this wasn’t occasional seasonal turbulence. This was a full-blown storm, the kind that every so often strutted the Caribbean, blowing down the tarp shacks and uprooting a tree here and there and giving those vacationing jerks paying $300 a day the hurricane story of a lifetime when they got back to Des Moines or Billings. Except that it wasn’t a hurricane. Just an awkward fucking storm just when he didn’t want one, right in the way of where he wanted to go.

“Shit!” Rodgers said with feeling. Briefly—but only briefly—life wasn’t quite so sweet anymore.

The wise money said to fly around it. The engines of the DC3 were already chattering like they had teeth and twice he’d thought they were going to cut out altogether. Rodgers bet the entire fucking aircraft was held together with no more than string, spit, and chewing gum.

If he went head-on into what was up ahead, he was going to end up in the matchstick-making business and that wasn’t the business he was interested in building into a career. Which course, then? Wise money again said even more abruptly to go eastwards, over Haiti, and hope he could get around the blockage and still cut westward to come down on the Matanzas airstrip.

Except the bastard Colombians had short-changed him on the fuel, knowing the gauge was faulty and that he couldn’t really challenge them. It was fucking amazing: every run worth a minimum of $50 million, and they had to cheat on nickels and dimes.

Westward then? Less chance of being driven out into die Atlantic, with nothing between him, paella, and die bullfights of Spain but three thousand miles of empty ocean. But the Americans were shit-hot around the Gulf: not just radar on the ground but AWACs planes in me air and spot-the-druggie training forming a permanent part of all air-force and naval exercises.

The DC3 began to buck and shudder, the stick sluggish in his hands and me rudder bar spongy underfoot. Decision time. Rodgers turned west; there might be a lot of guys in white hats, but this way there was also Mexico, and if the fuel got crucial, there were more safe illicit airstrips than fleas on a brown dog.

Rodgers had always had a nasty feeling about having to ditch in the sea and get his ass wet. Besides, there was the cargo to think of: almost five hundred kilos of high-purity cocaine could be better used on dry land—even if it weren’t the dry land upon which he was supposed to put down—than to clear the sinuses of the sharks and barracudas.

He still intended, if he could, to deliver in Cuba.

Rodgers kept right against the storm edge—able to see clear sunlight to his left, rain-lashed blackness to his right—riding the up and downdrafts, teeth snapping together with the suddenness of the lifts and drops. The ancient aircraft groaned and creaked in protest, those sounds overwhelmed by the crashing of the storm outside.

One of his wipers quit—fortunately not that of his immediate windshield—and then he went too close and was engulfed in the cloud, and the crack of the lightning strike was so loud it actually deafened him, making his ears ache. On the panel his instrumentation went haywire; the compass was whirling like a roulette wheel and the artificial horizon showed him falling sideways, although the altimeter had him at two thousand feet. If that were his correct height, then he’d been driven too low, Rodgers realized: dangerously too low. Not necessary to worry too much. He’d be difficult to detect, mixed up in this sort of shit.

Rodgers had the cans off his ears, held by the headpiece around his neck; through them came the occasional screech of static and in a sudden but brief moment of absolute clarity he picked up Miami airport sending out a general warning of a severe and unexpected storm in the Caribbean basin, setting out its longitude and latitude.

“Thanks a bunch, fella!” Rodgers said aloud. If anything in the goddamned airplane worked and he had any charts, he might have been able to find out how far, and how deep, he was into the storm.

The bright sunshine to port dazzled Rodgers, making him blink, and he turned out toward it, wanting to clear the cumulus and prevent the plane breaking up. The transition, from practically uncontrolled bucking to level-flying calm, was startling, and Rodgers heard his own breath go from him, unaware until that moment how tense he had been.

He watched eagerly for the instruments to settle, wanting a positive bearing, uncomfortably aware that by taking the course he had he had placed the storm—the storm that was still raging and growling to starboard—between himself and Cuba. And if it didn’t dissipate, which it showed no signs of doing, he was going to put himself dangerously close to the American mainland by flying around it.

He’d fucked up, Rodgers decided. The storm was stationary, a positive barrier. If he’d gone eastward in the first place, he could have come easily up over die Grand Bahama Bank, made a perfect three-pointer at Matanzas, and by now have been drinking the first rum and lime with the $100,000 delivery fee snug in the arm-strap money wallet that now hung empty and waiting, like a shoulder holster, beneath the sweat-blackened shirt.

“Son of a bitch!” he said bitterly. And then, when he saw it, he said “Oh fuck!” even more bitterly.

The first plane was a jet, a spotter, which circled and buzzed and tried to come close for a look-see but wasn’t able to because it couldn’t go that slowly. Very soon the rest of the squad, the smaller propeller-driven aircraft, swept in from the north and swarmed around him like killer bees. There were three; two pulled up close, either side, and although he couldn’t see, he guessed the third was above and behind, ready for any unexpected avoidance routine. The two alongside had U.S. Customs markings, as well as their government insignia. At an obvious signal each plane gave the wing-wobble follow-us instruction, and just in case he’d misunderstood, the pilot to starboard mimed the hand gesture.

“Fuck you,” said Rodgers. hoping the man had understood what he’d said. To himself, looking away, he said. “Sorry guys. What I ain’t got, you can’t find.” It seemed a criminal waste, dumping nearly half a ton of coke into the sea.

Rodgers put the controls into auto and groped his way toward the rear of the aircraft. The drug occupied very little of the cargo space, all easily accommodated near the port door. Such a waste, he thought again. He tugged at the handle. The bar was unlocked but it didn’t budge. He yanked again, feeling the sweat break out on his forehead, looking around for something solid with which he could smash at it. There wasn’t anything. It was only the fact that he was holding on to the handle, making another attempt to open it, that saved Rodgers from being hurled the complete length of the aircraft. It suddenly went nose-up, when the auto pilot slipped out, then began pitching downward. Rodgers let go, allowing the angle of the plunging aircraft to slide him back to the cockpit, snatching out for the controls to pull it back level. The sea was so close he could see the silver glint of the sun on the wave tops and make out a startled couple in a yellow and blue cruiser. Momentarily he was alone and then the escorts were alongside again; they would have thought he was trying to evade them, Rodgers realized. He put the auto on again, waiting, and at once it disengaged. He tried again. It disengaged again. It was a pretty simple choice, Rodgers recognized: death—injury at least—or discovery. From either side there was another wing wiggle and a hand gesture and this time Rodgers raised his hand in acknowledgment.

They put down in Tampa. By the time they landed the radio-alerted Customs had the airfield prepared, civilian as well as official vehicles blocking him the moment he stopped.

Rodgers sat where he was after turning off the systems; they had to hammer, too, to get through the jammed door. A stream of investigators came into the aircraft, some immediately coming up to the flight deck, others staying around the cargo.

“Well lookee here!” said one, in a thick, southern accent. “Why didn’t you dump it, you stupid bastard!”

Rodgers sought out the man who looked to be in charge. “I think we’ve got things to talk about,” he said.

EIGHT

IT WASN’T getting any better; worse, in fact. O’Farrell knew that he was still outwardly holding himself together—almost literally—and that no one, not even Jill, had guessed how his nerves were tightening up, but inwardly that was just how he did feel, stretched tight as if he were being gradually pulled apart on some medieval rack.

O’Farrell would definitely have gone to Petty and ended it, but for how things were going at home. That was worse, too. Not actually worse—it seemed important, as strained as he felt, to get the words accurate—but not as good as he would have liked. During a second visit to Chicago, Ellen admitted that she hadn’t gone to an attorney yet and there had been a shouted argument in front of Billy, which had been a mistake. They’d all ended up in tears, only O’Farrell staying dry-eyed, and that with difficulty. And then John had flunked a course in Phoenix. It was not an outright disaster, just a setback that was going to mean maybe an extra nine months before he graduated. And nine months was a rather apposite period, because in his last letter his son had announced that Beth was pregnant and they were all very happy about it. So were Jill and O’Farrell, although they realized it meant Beth was going to have to quit her job selling advertising space in the local Scottsdale newspaper, which had provided most of their income, apart from what O’Farrell sent and had intended to reduce.

It would not have been so difficult if O’Farrell hadn’t years before gone in for the sort of insurance he had, guaranteeing a tremendous death benefit but with matchingly high payments he was locked into, without any possibility of renegotiating. At the time he’d felt—he still felt—that it was the responsible thing to do to protect the unknowing Jill and the kids if anything did happen to him on an assignment, but in the changed circumstances it monthly absorbed more of his available cash than was convenient. And then there was the heavy mortgage on the Alexandria house. So there were nights in the den now when O’Farrell hunched over rows of figures, not his ancestor’s archive, working out how much he could afford to send to Arizona, on top of the allowance for Ellen, when Beth did have to stop work. He discussed it with Jill, of course, because they discussed every domestic situation together, and decided that the best they could manage for Phoenix was $300 a month; John had a part-time job in a garage anyway and they both agreed, without much discussion, that Ellen’s needs were greater. O’Farrell had been relieved, during the last telephone call two days ago, to hear that Ellen had at last gone to her attorney and that the lawyer had already written to Patrick. And even more relieved to hear that three pushers had been rounded up near Billy’s school without others appearing to have taken their place and that the feeling was that there had been an overreaction to the drug scare in the first place. O’Farrell hoped it were true.

The Wichita addition to his archives provided a welcome respite. The material came a month after the initial letter from the historical society and built up an appreciable amount about his great-grandfather’s early life. It stopped short of answering one of O’Farrell’s major questions—whether the man had been an immigrant or whether there had been an American O’Farrell before him—but it put him at eighteen on a westbound wagon trek and recorded his swearing in at Wichita as a sheriff’s deputy. Earlier than I started, reflected O’Farrell, the second martini already half-drunk and dinner still an hour away; years earlier in fact. But the ruling (by whom? O’Farrell wondered) decreed that a person had to attain a reasoning and balanced maturity before being inducted into the specialized section of the CIA to which O’Farrell was attached.

He finished the martini and topped up his glass with the overflow that seemed invariable these evenings, pleased that it practically filled his glass for a third time. The assessment wouldn’t be a problem, he was sure; he’d get through it, like he’d gotten through all the others. And not just the sessions with Symmons—any psychologist. Since his last, successful, encounter with the man, there had been range practice—not just fixed but moving targets—and his score had only been a point below his usual average. so the twitch in his hands wasn’t a problem in an important situation. And he’d isolated and evaded the watchers on each of the mandatory surveillance exercises and that wasn’t easy because shitty-shift penalties were imposed upon the tracking professionals if they failed. So he was still as good as ever. Almost. Just a bit under par, that’s all; distracted by the children’s difficulties.

Wrong, though, to let it all get to him like it had. So okay, they weren’t having an easy time—Ellen more than John—but objectively (always be calm and objective) they were a damned sight better off (and certainly better protected) than a lot of others their age. Had that been when it started, this uncertainty of his, around the time of Ellen’s problems? Near enough, O’Farrell thought; within days at least. Christ, these martinis were good! O’Farrell decided he could win drink-making contests with them. He studied the glass seriously, extended before him. Not a difficulty, he told himself. He’d increased from one to two—and sometimes a half more, so what!—a night but that was still a very moderate intake and it didn’t affect him at all. Still steady as a rock. Almost. Hadn’t he thought that word before? Not important. What was important was that he didn’t need it. That afternoon on the way back from Chevy Chase had been the last time he’d taken a drink before getting home and after that he’d set himself the test and passed, because he didn’t think of booze or need it during the day. Didn’t need it now; just a way of relaxing while Jill fixed the meal and he looked over the cuttings.

He hadn’t done anything about getting them copied, he realized. Or preserving the photograph upstairs. He really had to do that. Maybe he’d take the whole lot into Washington the following day and get it done, there and then. Then again, maybe he should wait and ask around; he couldn’t risk the slightest damage. Who could he ask? Someone in one of the libraries or archives, he supposed; Washington was knee-deep in records so it shouldn’t be difficult. He seemed to remember that the Library of Congress had a photographic section, too, so he could ask there about the fading print. He’d definitely do it the very next day. Not a lot of work on, after all. He was up to date with the accounts and Petty hadn’t—O’Farrell determinedly stopped the direction, unwilling to consider Petty and what a summons from the man would mean. Perhaps there wouldn’t be one anymore, he thought, the perpetual hope. With it came the other hope to which the first was always linked. There were others in the department after all—although he had no idea of their identities, of course, any more than they had of his—so it was not automatic he would be the one chosen.

With the third martini almost exhausted (no, he wouldn’t make anymore: that would be ridiculous) O’Farrell hunched over his glass, forcing the examination upon himself. Why? Why was he feeling like this, nervous like this, flaky like this! It couldn’t be any moral uncertainty. Every sentence he had carried out had been one hundred and one percent justified, absolutely, unquestionably, and unequivocably; all the evidence examined and checked, all the benefits and doubts allowed in the defendants’ favor. Proven guilty beyond doubt or appeal. Why then! Age; some midlife hormonal imbalance? Preposterous! What did age have to do with anything! The three-monthly physical examinations would have picked up any bodily fluctuations. And mentally he’d been trained far beyond this sort of infantile self-questioning. What about fear? The word presented itself in his mind, like an unwelcome guest whose shadow he had already picked out beyond a door but hoped would not intrude. Fear of what then? The roles being reversed? Had he become frightened of the tables being turned, of there one day being a mistake—the simplest, easiest error—and of himself becoming the victim, the hunted, rather than always the victor, the hunter?

Had that been how his great-grandfather felt when he retired? But at sixty, O’Farrell remembered, not forty-six. He shuddered the question away, not able to answer it anyway. There was something he could answer, positively resolve. Now that he’d let the unwelcome shadow take a form—present itself—O’Farrell was sure he could defeat it. As long as he didn’t make a mistake—and wasn’t that the thrust of all the training and retraining and exercises?—he didn’t run the risk of becoming a victim. There was a slight lift of relief, but very slight, not as much as he warned. Enough, though. He’d isolated the problem, and having isolated it, he could easily defeat it. He hoped that really was his problem.

O’Farrell responded at once to his wife’s call, curious when he stood to see that his glass was empty, because he couldn’t remember finishing it. He carried it with him to the kitchen and smiled at Jill, who smiled back.

“I was writing to Ellen and I burned the meat loaf,” she apologized.

O’Farrell became aware of the smell. “I like my meat loaf well done.”

“You got it!”

The gin and vermouth were still on the counter, where he had left the bottles after making his martini. He put his empty glass beside the sink, away from them. With his back to his wife, O’Farrell said, “Would you like a drink with dinner?”

“Drink?”

“I bought some California burgundy—Napa Valley—on the way home.”

“No,” said Jill, very definitely.

“Then I won’t, either,” he said, turning and smiling at her again. Another proving test, showing (showing who?) that he didn’t need it.

They sat with their heads lowered and O’Farrell gave thanks, wondering for the first time ever if there were an hypocrisy in how easy he found it to pray. Why should there be? Were more regular lawmen—FBI agents and CIA officers and sheriffs and policemen and marshals and drug enforcement agents and Customs investigators—precluded from acknowledging God because of the occasional outcome of their vocation?

“I told Ellen we’d go up next weekend,” Jill announced, serving the meal. “I haven’t sealed the letter, though; just in case you didn’t want to.”

“Is that likely?”

“I didn’t want to take it for granted.”

“I love you,” O’Farrell blurted. And he did. He felt a physical warmth, a surge of emotion, toward her; he could have made love to her, right there, and decided to, later.

Jill smiled across the table at him, appearing surprised. “I love you, too,” she said.

“There’s something I want to tell you—” O’Farrell started to say, and then jerked to a stop, horrified at how close he’d come to bringing about an absolute disaster. He’d actually set out to explain to her—the words were jumbled there, in his mind—what he truly did! The incredulous awareness momentarily robbed him of any speech, although his mind still functioned. What was the right order of words?

I think you should know, darling, that I kill people. But don’t be alarmed. I am one of a select few, executioners who operate within their own concepts of legality, justified—although not officially acknowledged or recognized—by the United States of America to rid it (and the world) of men who deserve to die but are beyond the reach or jurisdiction of any normal court of justice. Think how many lives would have been saved—assassination actually saves lives, you know—if someone had removed Hitler or Stalin or Amin. I just thought you should know and the meat loaf isn’t burned too badly at all!

“What?” prompted Jill.

“Nothing … I … nothing …” O’Farrell mumbled.

“But you started to say—”

“I wasn’t thinking.…”

“Darling! You’re not making sense! And you’re sweating! The sweat’s all over your face. What is it!”

“Nothing.” He was still groping, seeking an escape. What were the words! The explanation!

Jill laid down her knife and fork, staring at him across the table. “Are you all right!”

“Hot, that’s all,” he said, mumbling. “Maybe a fever.” Could he get away with something as facile as that? She wasn’t stupid—and she worked in a medical environment, for Christ’s sake!

“Can I get you anything?”

The meat loaf was dry in his mouth, the ground beef like sawdust blocking his throat. He gulped at the water she’d set out, wishing it were the red wine he’d brought (better still, a strong gin). “It was an odd feeling, that’s all. It’s gone now. I’m all right. Honest.” Why had he done it? What insanity had momentarily seized him and carried him so close to the cliff edge like that?

“So?” Jill prompted.

“So?” O’Farrell was stalling, still without the proper words.

“You started to say there was something you wanted to tell me?” she reminded him gently.

“The money,” O’Farrell said desperately. “I made some calculations in the den tonight. I think we can afford to go on making the kids the sort of allowance that we are at the moment.”

Jill frowned at him. “But we already decided that.”

“I wasn’t sure,” O’Farrell said, a drowning man finding firmer ground. ‘That’s why I made the calculations. Now I am. Sure, I mean.”

Jill stayed frowning. “Good,” she said curiously.

“It is good, isn’t it?” O’Farrell started to eat again, forcing himself to swallow.

“Very good,” she agreed, still doubtful.

That night they didn’t make love after all. O’Farrell remained awake long after Jill had fallen asleep beside him, his body as well as his mind held rigid by the enormity of his near collapse. His body was wet with the recollection but his mouth was dry, parched, so that he lay with his mouth open and had the impression that his lips were about to crack. He desperately wanted a drink but refused to get out of bed, fearing that if he went to the kitchen for water, he would change his mind and pour something else. Didn’t need it, he told himself. Didn’t need it. Couldn’t give in. Wouldn’t give in.

“Sweet Jesus!” exclaimed McCarthy. “Holy sweet Jesus!” He was given to blasphemous outbursts when he was excited and he was excited now.

“Quite a picture,” Sneider agreed, seeking a lead from the other man.

“We can close down Belac,” the CIA department head said. “Lure the bastard here, have the FBI arrest him, and then hit him with so many indictments he won’t know which way is which.”

“What about the ambassador, Rivera?”

“Which is what he is, an ambassador,” said McCarthy, with logic that would have been absurdly obscure to any other man.

“He’s not committing a crime within the jurisdiction of any American court. And he can always cop a plea of diplomatic immunity if we save it up for later.”

McCarthy nodded in agreement. “He’s got to be stopped, though.”

“No doubt about it.” Sneider knew the way now.

McCarthy used the private telephone on his desk, one that was security-cleared but did not go through the CIA switchboard. “George!” he greeted when Petty answered. “How are things?”

“Good,” said Petty, from his office near Lafayette Park.

“Busy?”

“Not particularly.”

“Thought we might meet?”

“You choose.”

“How about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s good.”

“Twelve-thirty?”

“Fine.”

The summons to Charles O’Farrell came twenty-four hours after that.