O'Farrell's Law (11 page)

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.

NINE

P
ETTY DECREED
a meeting in the open air, which he sometimes did, and which O'Farrell regarded as overly theatrical, like those movies about the CIA where people met each other without one acknowledging or looking directly at the other. The section head chose the Ellipse, at noon, but O'Farrell intentionally arrived early. He put his car in the garage on E Street, which meant he had to walk back past the National Theater and the Willard, where he and Jill had endured the embarrassment of that face-slapping row. Momentarily he considered the Round Robin again but almost at once dismissed it. Instead he cut around the block to the Washington Hotel, choosing the darkened ground-floor bar, not the open rooftop veranda overlooking the Treasury Building and the White House beyond. It was more discreet, anonymous; he certainly didn't want to encounter Petty and Erickson taking an early cocktail themselves. He didn't know if either of them drank; didn't know anything at all about them. Just that they were the two from whom he took his orders. In the first year there had been three. Chris Wilmot had been an asthmatic jogger who'd died on a morning run down Capitol Hill. O'Farrell never knew why the man hadn't been replaced.

He ordered a double gin and tonic, but poured in only half the tonic, briefly staring into the glass. Okay, so now he was drinking during the day. Not the day; the morning. Needed it, that's all. Just one, to get his hands steady. He studied them as he reached forward for the glass; hardly a movement. He was fine. Just this one then. Wouldn't become a habit. How could it? Other times he had an office to go to and accounts to balance. Nothing at all wrong in taking an occasional drink this early; quite pleasant in fact. Relaxing. That's what he had to do, relax. Get rid of the sensation balled up in his gut, like he'd eaten too much heavy food he couldn't shift, the feeling that had been there since the telephone call.

More movie theatrics. “There's a need for us to meet.” No hello, no identification, no good-bye, no kiss-my-ass. O'Farrell openly sniggered at the nonsense of it. The barman was at the far end, near the kitchen door, reading the sports section of the
Washington Post
, and didn't hear.

O'Farrell took a long pull at his drink. Tasted good; still only 11:20. Plenty of time to cross over to the park. To what? He made himself think. There was only one answer. Who would it be? And why? And how difficult? The method was always the most difficult; that's what made him so good, the time and trouble he always took over the method. Never any embarrassment, never any comeback. It would be the sixth, he calculated, the same number now as his great-grandfather. Who'd retired after that. No, not quite. The man had stayed in office for another five or six years at least. But he'd never been forced into another confrontation. Six, O'Farrell thought again. All justified, every one of them. Crimes against the country, against the people; his country, his people. Verdicts had not been returned by a recognized court, that's all; no question of what those verdicts would have been, if there had been an arraignment. Guilty every time. Unanimous; guilty as charged, on all counts.

Eleven-thirty, he saw. Still plenty of time. Some tonic left. He made a noise and the barman looked up, nodding to O'Farrell's gesture.

The barman set the fresh glass in front of him and said. “Time to kill, eh?”

“Something like that.”

“Visiting?”

“Just looking around,” O'Farrell said, purposely vague. Never be positive, never look positive, in any casual encounter; always essential to be instantly forgotten at the moment of parting.

“Great city, Washington. Lot to see.”

A great capital for a great country, thought O'Farrell, the familiar reflection. “So I hear.”

“Where you from?”

“Nowhere special.”

The barman appeared unoffended by the evasion. He said, “Austin myself. Been here five years, though. Wouldn't go back.”

“Never been to Texas,” O'Farrell lied, unwilling to get entangled in an exchange about landmarks or places they both might know. There was a benefit, from the conversation. It was meaningless, empty chitchat, but O'Farrell looked upon it as a test, mentally observing himself as he thought Petty and Erickson might observe him later. He was doing good, he assured himself. Hands as steady as a rock now, the lump in his stomach not so discomforting anymore.

“All the sights are very close to here,” offered the barman. “Smithsonian, Space Museum, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial …”

And the Museum of American History, thought O'Farrell. It was his favorite, a place of which he never tired; he'd hoped, a long time ago, that he might find some reference to his ancestor in Kansas but the archivist hadn't found anything; perhaps he should try again. He said, “Thanks for the advice.”

“You feel like another?” The barman indicated O'Farrell's empty glass.

Yes, he thought, at once. “Time to go,” he said.

“See you again, maybe?”

“Maybe,” said O'Farrell. He wouldn't be able to use the place anymore, in case the man remembered.

The bar had been darker than he realized, and once outside he squinted against the sudden brightness, wishing he'd brought his dark glasses from the car. He hesitated, looking back toward the parking garage and then in the direction of the Ellipse, deciding there was insufficient time now, nearly five-to as it was. O'Farrell was lucky with the lights on Pennsylvania and again on the cross street but still had to hurry to get to the grassed area before the hour struck, which he wanted to do. Petty was a funny bastard and absolute punctuality was one of his fetishes.

He heard the chime from some unseen clock at the same time as he saw both of them on one of the benches opposite the Commerce Building, and thought, Damn! He wasn't late—right on time—but it would have been better if he'd been waiting for them rather than the other way around.

They saw O'Farrell at the same time and rose to meet him, walking not straight toward him but off at a tangent into the path, so that he had to change direction slightly to fall into step.

“Sorry to have kept you,” he said at once.

“You weren't late,” the section head assured him. “We were early.” Petty was using a pipe with a bowl that seemed out of proportion to its stem; the tobacco was sweet smelling, practically perfumed.

“It was a pleasant day to sit in the sun,” Erickson said.

O'Farrell still had his eyes screwed against the brightness and hoped he didn't get a headache. He experienced a flicker of irritation. The three of them knew why they were there, so why pussyfoot around talking about the weather! He said. “What is it?”

“Difficult one,” Petty said. “Bad.”

Weren't they all, O'Farrell thought. He scarcely felt any apprehension; no shake, no uncertainty. “What?”

“Drugs and guns, two-way traffic,” came in Erickson. “Cuba working to destabilize God knows what in Latin America.”

“Drugs!” O'Farrell said at once.

“Massive shipments,” said Petty. “That's how Havana is raising the money.”