necessary to continue making it appear that he was: monitor the daily movements, as Petty advised, and create the bomb and park the Seat in the street he had selected. There was always the possibility of a watch squad that he hadn’t bothered this time to locate, and they would have to support his account that he’d done everything possible before aborting the attempt because his own detection and seizure would have been inevitable. The taking care that Petty had insisted upon.
O’Farrell hid himself among a small crowd watching Rivera’s departure that first morning and, afterward, in his hotel room, watched the television coverage of the formal opening, although he couldn’t understand the commentary. He saw Rivera on three occasions, each time enclosed by security men. He checked the man in and out of the embassy during the luncheon adjournment, saw more television coverage in the afternoon, and was standing on the pavement again in the evening when Rivera returned. It was interesting, O’Farrell reflected, that the scheduled timings had been remarkably accurate, the only difference being in the evening, and that by Rivera being just two minutes late.
The sealed, eyes-only package containing the Semtex and the timer would be at the embassy by now. It would be wrong if he didn’t collect them sometime the following day. He’d do it after seeing Rivera away. It would mean his carrying a bomb around a city on full security alert, but by itself Semtex looked like gray cement, and he could leave it in the trunk. The timer he would keep in his room, a rather elaborate alarm clock to anything but the closest of examinations.
O’Farrell was awake early, once more without any discomfort from .the previous night’s intake, setting out in good time for what was becoming routine. He was attracted by a perfume shop on the opposite side of the road and crossed, spending several minutes looking at the window selection, trying to decide upon a present for Jill. Definitely perfume, because she enjoyed perfume. And something for Ellen, too. Her birthday, he remembered; the birthday for which Billy had been saving. They could say it was from both of them.
The window-shopping had delayed him and the crowd had already formed ahead as he approached. He was still about thirty yards away when the gates of the embassy opened and the diplomatic vehicles began emerging. The timing’s off today, thought O’Farrell. Rivera’s car was just clear of the entrance when the explosion came, a window-shattering eruption with an immediate after-punch blast of air that knocked him heavily into the bordering wall. Rivera’s limousine disintegrated in front of his eyes: O’Farrell was just able, to its left, to see the other car that had formed the bomb, its cratered and burning shell visible through the debris and dust.
O’Farrell’s training automatically took over. He rebounded off the wall, already turning to get away from a scene of violence. What the hell! What or who in the name of Christ had—
It was as far as O’Farrell’s bewilderment ever got. The shot was perfect, absolutely professional, a spread- on-impact, high-velocity shell that caught him midchest, gouging the life from him. It was too quick for there to be the slightest pain. He was dead before his body landed, half on the pavement, half on the road. But his face was frozen by shock. His eyes were wide open, staring, an expression of astonishment.
THIRTY-FOUR
IT WAS the first bad day of a Washington autumn, gray and sullen with a spiteful wind strong enough to howl through the larger catafalques and burial vaults. There was a lot of security because of the Secretary of State’s attendance, secret servicemen with their walkie-talkies and earpieces standing point around the entire grave area. The official cars had been allowed to pull very close, a further precaution, but McCarthy’s vehicle, a long stretch limousine to accommodate all the people, had been allowed to park on a promontory separate from the rest. Against the smoke-glassed windshield were attached sufficient passes and official clearances to allow it to go anywhere it wanted.
There were five men in the vehicle. All were dressed solemnly, although just short of funeral black. The elevation of the vehicle enabled them to see everything.
“There’s the family,” Petty said as a group got from one of the huddled cars and slowly led the way to the grave edge. “Billy’s the one to the right.”
The boy was in fact holding his mother’s hand and weeping bitterly. Ellen was walking with difficulty, trying to support her head-bowed, sobbing mother on her other arm. John was helping on the other side, and Beth was holding tightly to their son. Mother and son were crying, too.
“You put the fix in, with Chicago?” McCarthy asked.
Petty nodded. “Patrick’s payments are being computer-monitored. There’s no chance of his falling behind.”
“That’s good,” the Plans director said absently.
There was a flurry of movement from cameramen as the Secretary of State and his party came into shot with the family.
“We can’t go down there. We could be photographed too easily,” Sneider said from behind the wheel. He was driving because of the need for absolute security within the vehicle.
“I’m still not sure that O’Farrell had cracked completely, that he would have fouled up some way,” Petty said. “He’d made all the right moves.”
“He would have cracked,” Lambert said, with quiet, expert insistence. “My guess is that he wouldn’t have fouled up; he was still too good for that. My guess is that in the end he wouldn’t have gone through with it.”
“We owe a lot to you, doctor,” McCarthy said, the architect of everything that had happened. “If it hadn’t been for you, O’Farrell would have stayed a basket case after London, and none of the rest would have been possible. Not so perfectly as it has turned out.”
“He certainly developed a strong dependence,” Lambert agreed modestly. “It was too strong for him to continue on his own anymore. The doubt was too deep.”
“So often the way it happens.” McCarthy sighed.
“He was doing every thing he should have done in Ma drid,” Erickson insisted, coming out in support of his division chief.
“What was the point in taking the risk!” McCarthy said, with strained patience. “This way everything is boxed and tied with ribbon. Rivera’s dead, as we intended. The speculation about the who’s and why’s of that killing will go on for weeks, and every day it’ll act as the warning we always planned it to be to Havana. And in Spanish custody is a man provably a Soviet assassin; it doesn’t matter a damn that the guy won’t talk or admit anything. They got him in the room with the gun still in his hand, for Christ’s sake! It fits perfectly with the history of O’Farrell’s mother; Moscow pursuing relentlessly the son of a nationalist dissident. We can even seed the doubt that the murder-suicide verdict on the parents was wrong. That their deaths were Soviet orchestrated, too …” McCarthy looked at Petty, as the doubter. “You see anything hanging loose from that?”
Petty wished he could. He still believed absolutely in the correctness of what he and his department had to do, but this was the first time they’d turned on one of their own people. It frightened him. He said, “I agree it wraps everything up.”
“Maneuvering the Soviet involvement and then alerting the Spanish authorities was brilliant,” Sneider said syco-phantically, stroking McCarthy’s favorite hobbyhorse.
“Didn’t I say that’s what the Russians would do when we leaked O’Farrell as the killer of Leonid Makarevich?” McCarthy said.
The arrested Soviet assassin was named Vladimir Kopalin, Petty knew. He knew, too, that the Agency had monitored the man’s arrival in Madrid and watched him stalk O’Farrell and let it happen:
“Sure, why not?” The Plans director shrugged. “That way Mrs. O’Farrell collects a nice fat pension as well as the insurance.”
“What about the new man, who really took Rivera out?” Lambert queried.
“What about him?” Erickson demanded. He was as unsettled as Petty.
“He okay?”
“He said it was easy; called it a piece of cake,” Petty reported. “Actually it was the way suggested by
