There’d been a connection with Vienna the second time: March 1975. Paris. The name this time had been Leonid Makarevich, although they discovered at least four aliases during the investigation. A KGB major, the guns- and-bombs delivery man for the terrorist groups. A similarity with the current operation, O’Farrell supposed. The proof was that Makarevich had supplied the explosives for the TWA bombing and O’Farrell recognized the Russian immediately from the photographs; he was the man with whom Mouhajer had conducted three meetings in Vienna.
A Hermes scarf on this occasion for Jill, another nationally dressed doll for Ellen, a penknife for John.
They never had, though. Would he ever bring her here to London? O’Farrell wondered, as the airport bus left the motorway to become clogged in the morning rush-hour traffic. He doubted it. The decision to avoid all the operational places had been unconscious, until now. He never wanted to return anywhere he’d worked professionally, never wanted to be reminded by a street he’d walked, a building he’d passed, a restaurant where he’d eaten. Alone.
He was alone now. Had to be. The unseen, never-there man. Coming into the city by bus was the necessary initial move, mingling with a crowd and not risking a taxi. From the city terminal, garment bag in hand, he walked three streets before hailing one, changing transport this time because a person boarding a town bus with a suitcase is remembered. He paid the cab off in Courtfield Road and waited until it disappeared into Earls Court before setting out again to lose himself, crossing the Cromwell Road in the direction of Kensington but soon stopping short, locating the ideal guest house just past Cottesmore Gardens. The owner was a thin-faced, weak-eyed man who greeted O’Farrell in shirt sleeves and offered him the choice of a front or back room. O’Farrell chose the back and paid in cash for three nights, saying that he was on an economy vacation and would be going north, to Edinburgh, by the middle of the week. He was asked to enter his own registration, in an exercise-book type ledger. He used the name Bernard Hepplewhite, the First of the four aliases that had been decided upon, and said he would not be needing any food, not even breakfast.
The room was basic but clean and the bed linen fresh, for which he was grateful; it was always necessary to use anonymous places like this, and sometimes they’d been dirty.
It had, of course, been an overnight flight—from New York, not Washington, a further security detour—and O’Farrell had not slept at all. He attempted to now. Tired, overly fatigued people made mistakes he couldn’t make … O’Farrell lay wide-eyed for an hour and then reluctantly took the prescribed pill, which gave him relief for four hours. He awoke just after midday, clog-eyed and dry-mouthed and unrested. Water, that’s all; all he’d take was water. Didn’t need anything else. A lot to do. Not Rivera yet, though. One of those first lessons:
He ignored the bars and restaurants and hotels on Kensington High Street and others in Kensington Church Street and Earls Court Road, noting instead the name of a boardinghouse in Holland Street and another in Queen’s Gate Terrace. He found an unvandalized telephone booth back on Kensington High Street from which he called both boardinghouses, setting up consecutive reservations for when he left Courtfield Road.
O’Farrell used a map of the London underground to cross the city and locate another boardinghouse in Marylebone—in Crossmore Road—and a fifth, a small commercial hotel, two miles to the west off Warwick Road. It was more difficult this time to find a telephone box that worked but he managed it at last, in Porteus Road, and made three-night reservations to continue from those he’d already secured in Kensington.
By 5:30 he felt exhausted, heavy-eyed and heavy-limbed, aching everywhere. And thirsty; very thirsty. Carefully he chose an unlicensed coffee bar, where the actual coffee was disgusting, and ate chicken coated in a gluti-nously cold sauce and papier-mache peas.
Completely drained as O’Farrell was, he still had to observe other professional necessities before he went back to Courtfield Road, but it was a halfhearted performance for the watchers he knew would be in place.
He walked to Marble Arch underground station, several times using doorway reflections and crossing streets abruptly to check for pursuit. He passed by one entrance to the subway and turned into Oxford Street before darting sideways to enter the system. O’Farrell remained on the Central line for only two stops, getting off at Oxford Circus to pick up the Victoria line but going north instead of south. Too tired and disinterested to do anything else, he caught a cruising taxi at Euston and rode it all the way to Gloucester Road. So tired was he that he was aware of his feet scuffing, too heavy to lift into a definite step. Didn’t matter how tired he was. Not yet. Not even reconnaissance at this stage. Basic groundwork, that’s all. Which he still had to complete. Plenty of time tomorrow. The day after that, if it were necessary. No hurry, no panic. Always wrong to hurry and panic. Dangerous.
The weak-eyed man was still in his shirt sleeves when O’Farrell pulled himself up the worn steps of the board-inghouse, nodding at him but not smiling.
“Too late for dinner,” he challenged at once.
“I said I didn’t want to eat,” O’Farrell reminded him.
“There’s the bar, though; not really a bar. You tell me what you want, and I get it for you and bring it into the lounge.” He nodded toward a closed door to his right. “It’s very comfortable. There’s television.”
O’Farrell clenched his hands again. “No, thank you,” he said. “Nothing.”
“Seen all you wanted to, the first day?”
“I think so,” O’Farrell said.
“This is a shitty job. You ever think what a shitty job this is?” The driver’s name was Wentworth. He was bulged from junk food and sitting around, the necessities of a watcher’s life.
“All the time,” Connors agreed. The observer was a music enthusiast; the personal stereo and earphones were in his lap now, the Tchaikovsky tape twice exhausted. He disconsolately lifted and then dropped the stereo in his lap and said, “I can’t believe I forgot the other fucking tapes!”
“You think he’s in for the night?”
“How the fuck do I know!” demanded the observer. “It’s only nine.”
“So we gotta wait?”
“ ’Course we gotta wait.”
“What do you think?”
“About what?”
“About how he’s behaved so far, that’s about what!” Wentworth said. “What else do you think I mean, for Christ’s sake!”
Connors considered the question. Then he said, “By the book. Everything he should have done so far.”
“Didn’t lose us on that runaround, did he?” There was a triumphant note in Wentworth’s voice.
“He was only going through the motions,” Connors guessed, groping around and beneath the seat yet again for the mislaid cassette carrier. “I don’t think he was really trying.”
“Would you have admitted it if he had lost us?”
“ ’Course not, asshole!” the observer said.
“We could have been suspended,” the driver said.
Connors stopped searching, grinning sideways. “Almost worth lying over, on a shitty job like this,” he agreed.
