O'Farrell's Law

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

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

“Why?”

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

“Who said that?”

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

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

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

“A soldier, obeying orders?”

“I find that a good analogy.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What about him?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well done!” Lambert said, congratulatory.

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

“You just called it that.”

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

“Innocent people get killed in wars.”

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

“So you’re quitting?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Not even thought about it?” Lambert persisted.

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

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

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

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

“Is that the diagnosis? Lacking motivation?”

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

“Which is that I am lacking motivation?”