O'Farrell's Law

It hadn’t sounded as good as he’d expected, Rivera conceded. Improvising, he said, “There’ve been threats in Havana, apparently. I wasn’t identified, but the government thinks it all fits. It’s another reason for thinking there’s not a lot of risk now; having failed here, they’ll choose another target somewhere else.”

“What’s it feel like, knowing people tried to kill you?” Henrietta was a complete sensualist, and for the first time her voice sounded normal.

“Strange,” he said, improvising further because he knew her need. “I felt suspended to begin with, numbed —”

“What about excited!”

“Yes, later. Very excited.”

“Excited like you know I mean?”

“Yes,” Rivera said. There were occasions during their lovemaking when Rivera was nervous about what she’d wanted to do much as he was uneasy now.

“I wish we could meet,” she said, soft-voiced.

“I’ll find a way,” Rivera said emptily. He’d tried for a long time, before telephoning her, to think of something and failed.

“What would it matter if the security people knew we were together anyway?” Henrietta demanded.

It was a valid question; where, precisely, was the problem? “That’s really more of a difficulty for you than for me now. You’re the one who’s got the husband.”

“Only in name, dear.” Henrietta giggled. “I don’t see why it should be a difficulty. They won’t be in the room with us, after all, will they? As far as they are concerned, you’re simply visiting friends.”

It was certainly a way. Rivera realized. And he wanted a way, because already he was missing her. He wished he could gauge how she really felt. Now that Estelle was gone, there were a lot of possibilities they could consider together. Rivera tried to find the drawbacks to Henrietta’s suggestion. Very few, he conceded. Mendez would obviously report to Havana, using the newly restored authority so long denied him, which might possibly prompt a query, but an explanation was easy. He was cultivating Sir William Blanchard, an influential newspaper magnate, in the hope of getting articles favorable to Cuba in the man’s publications. He could, in fact, send his own report to Havana, in anticipation of it being demanded. He said, “I think you’ve found the answer.”

“When?” she demanded instantly.

For the first time Rivera remembered how recently Estelle had died. “Not for a day or two.”

“William’s away all next week.”

“Certainly next week then.”

“Before if you can.”

“I promise.”

That night, in that part of the diplomatic pouch only Rivera was allowed to open, came the confirmation: the master of the City of Athens was scheduling his departure from San Diego in two days’ time. The ambassador was relieved that the lading had gone uninterrupted. It meant, he realized, that $12 million should be transferred to Belac, to complete their deal. Rivera smiled, less frightened than he had been immediately after Estelle’s assassination. He’d hold on to it for a few more days. He was well enough protected, for the time being. It would be good, showing Belac he was unafraid.

It was a sprawling complex they could enter separately without any suggestion of a meeting, and inside the security was absolute, so McCarthy and Sneider traveled to Fort Pearce separately from Petty and Erickson for the meeting with Lambert.

There was a game show on the television when the group entered Lambert’s office, and for several moments the psychologist kept it running, gesturing toward it.

“Do you know that in half an hour of a show like this, you can see most of the theories of Freud with a few of Jung’s, for good measure?” he asked.

“If you say so,” McCarthy said, unimpressed.

Lambert took the hint and switched the set off. “Coffee or booze?” he invited.

“Booze.” McCarthy’s coffee drinking ended promptly with the beginning of happy hour. “You got Wild Turkey?”

“Yes,” Lambert said; he stocked it for this meeting, knowing McCarthy’s preference.

“Two fingers, with a little branch water. No ice,” McCarthy stipulated.

“The same,” Sneider said.

Petty declined a drink. The ulcer was giving him hell and the medication wasn’t helping a damn. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Do you mind if I fart?” Lambert asked.

Petty already had his hand lifted hopefully toward his top pocket. He stopped, frowning. “What’s that mean?”

“Means I find pipe smoking offensive in public, like farting.” Lambert said.

McCarthy chuckled, accepting his drink. “We’re all of us going to wear you down in the end, George. Why don’t you just surrender?”

Petty dropped heavily into a chair, leaving his pipe where it was. He said, “O’Farrell gone?”

“About two hours ago,” the psychologist said.

“Tell me in simple words, no inside-the-head crap,” McCarthy said.

“There was a great deal of guilt about wrongly killing the woman; I got rid of a lot of it,” said Lambert. “At the end he was calling it an accident as a matter of course. But that really just provided a focus for the real problem. He’s started to question the morality: what right have we to decide upon life or death? I think I got him back more or less on course there. He’s proud of his army service, the medals and the recognition for being a gung-ho, behind-the-lines bastard. Which is another problem: he doesn’t have the security blanket of knowing there’s someone or something behind him if he fouls up. That was his real emotion coming back on the plane. Plenty of guilt, sure. But terror for himself, too. The ancestral archive is him grabbing out for some sort of justification, wanting to imagine himself the lawman.”

“What about the mother and the father and the Russian thing?” Sneider asked.

Lambert shook his head, going to his coffee machine. “No particular trauma there. He regrets not visiting them more when they got older, thinks he might have seen some change in his mother in time to get her treatment and prevent it happening, but it’s not a big problem for him.”

“It did happen though, didn’t it?” McCarthy pressed.

“What?” Lambert frowned.

McCarthy gave a dismissive head movement. “Talking to myself,” he said. “He mention Makarevich at all?”

“Never,” Lambert said at once.

“So what’s the bottom line?” Petty asked. “Can he work again or not?”

“Depends how you wrap the package,” Lambert said. “O’Farrell’s got a lot of pride, about his house and his family and looking after everyone; about doing everything right. Proud of not being a quitter; that was a phrase that came out several times, as we talked. And then there’s the flag and the country and patriotism. I’m pretty sure it’s genuine, but of course it makes it easy for him to think of himself as the soldier he once was.”

“So how the hell do you wrap that up in a package that doesn’t leak!” Sneider demanded.

“I don’t know,” Lambert admitted. “Everything would depend on the assignment. He’d have to believe it absolutely—more absolutely than the checks and balances he’s previously been allowed—even to consider it.”

“Let’s skin the cat another way,” Erickson said. “Let’s say we did all that, proved that the devil had made it back in human form. What are the chances of O’Farrell’s nerve going or his motivation failing and everything going splat, right in our faces?”

“Always a possibility,” Lambert said unhelpfully. “Always has been, always will be, unless you employ psychos. O’Farrell said something like that himself.”

“I’m not getting a lot of guidance here,” Petty protested. “None of us are.”

“I’m giving you my opinion,” Lambert said. “Not what I think you want to hear. Aren’t we trying to prevent everything going splat, right in our faces?”

McCarthy grimaced. “Didn’t you ask him outright if he wanted to quit?”

“A few times,” Lambert said. “I never got a full answer, on any occasion. First he’d say yes, then he’d say