O'Farrell's Law

by Brian Freemantle

  “A few days,” O’Farrell said, sufficiently sober now to be unsettled by what was happening. It never had before, after any previous mission. But then, he reminded himself, no previous mission had ended like this one.

  “That’s what we’re talking about,” Petty said.

  Why was the talk like this: the casual chitchat of a cocktail party! Why weren’t they talking about a blown-apart woman named Estelle Rivera who had a well-mannered, cute little kid who’d missed being blown apart with her only by a fluke, because a car had been parked in an inconvenient place and it was raining?

  “I killed someone!” O’Farrell yelled, so unexpectedly loud that Erickson, by the door, jumped. “I murdered an innocent person!”

  “Easy now, easy,” Lambert soothed. “Not tonight. Later.”

  “Why’s everyone avoiding it, as if it never happened! Why later?”

  “No one’s avoiding it,” Lambert said, still soothing. “We’ll talk it all through, you and me, tomorrow.”

  Another twenty-four hours—twelve at least—for them to discover if he’d left any trace? A possibility, O’Farrell knew. What would they do to him if he had, if there were the likelihood of the whole mess becoming a public disaster? He shifted, unsettled; the business of these men was killing potential embarrassment, wasn’t it? Wrong, perhaps, to erupt as he had. Could he back down without appearing to do so? He said, “What will the result be, after we’ve talked it all through?” and wished he’d thought of something better, something stronger.

  “We won’t know that until we’ve talked, will we?” said Lambert, making a perceptible gesture for the other two men to leave. “Let’s go see where you’re going to bunk down.”

  Despite the suggestion, it wasn’t a bunk. It was a bed in a single room a little farther along the same corridor. There were built-in closets and a private bathroom, a remote-controlled television, and Newsweek and Time on a table separating two easy chairs. Like every motel room in which he’d ever stayed, O’Farrell thought. He was glad to see the bathroom.

  “Anything you want—food, booze, anything—just pick up the phone and tell the operator,” Lambert said.

  There were two phones, one beside the bed, the second on the magazine table. O’Farrell saw that neither had a dialing mechanism. He wasn’t sure, but he thought the man had just slightly stressed the word “booze” when he’d made the offer. Testing, O’Farrell said, “It was a long flight. I wouldn’t mind walking around a little.”

  Lambert grimaced, a man imparting rules he hasn’t made and doesn’t approve. “There’s not been time to get you any authorization documents,” he said. “You know what the security’s like here: the mice carry ID!”

  The man who looked too young to be here at all was trying his best, O’Farrell conceded. He said, “No walks?”

  “Afraid not.”

  O’Farrell indicated the telephones. “What about outside calls? I need to speak to my wife.”

  “Not just yet,” Lambert said apologetically. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Or the day after,” O’Farrell said.

  “Maybe,” Lambert agreed.

  “You going to lock the door?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a guard at the back as well as at the front of the building?”

  “Yes,” Lambert confirmed.

  “Where I would be stopped, forcibly if necessary, if I tried to go by.”

  “It’s the way they’re trained in a place like this.”

  “So I’m under arrest? Imprisoned?” O’Farrell demanded.

  “I wouldn’t have described it as that.”

  “Describe it to me your way,” O’Farrell insisted.

  “Protected,” Lambert said. “Extremely well protected. I would have thought you’d be grateful.”

  The men rode for a long time without speaking to each other. Petty contacted an emergency number from the car phone and had himself patched through to McCarthy for a brief, monosyllabic conversation. When he replaced the instrument, Petty said, “Our antiterrorist unit at the embassy has been allowed access by the British. More theories than you can shake a stick at. Current favorite is that it’s political, Latin American-based. Forensics has identified the explosive as Semtex and the metal left from the detonator as of Soviet manufacture.”

  “Looks good, then?” Erickson, was pleased to get in first with a question rather than having to provide an answer.

  “Exactly as it was planned, apart from the victim,” Petty confirmed. Before Erickson could speak again, he said, “So what about O’Farrell?”

  “I think we need to get the result of the debriefing to be sure,” Erickson said. “He looked as flaky as hell when he came off that airplane. And there was the booze. There was quite a bit of it in London, too.”

  “He seemed to sober up quickly enough,” Petty said. “But there’s a lot of guilt there. He’s supposed to be trained to control guilt.”

  “Retire him?”

  “McCarthy wants to talk to me about it.”

  “What’s there to talk about?”

  Petty shrugged. “Who can tell? You know what a devious bastard McCarthy is. He’s had quite a conversation with Lambert, apparently.”

  “This time we seem to have gotten away with it,” Erickson said. “I think to risk using O’Farrell again would be madness.”

  Petty gave another shrug. “Who knows?” he said again.

  “In the immediate future we don’t have to get within a million miles of José Gaviria Rivera.”

  Back in Fort Pearce, O’Farrell actually considered kneeling by the bedside, like a kid, but shook his head against the idea, looking around the empty room in positive embarrassment. He tried to pray, lying in bed in the darkness, but shrugged that attempt off, too. There could be no forgiveness, no absolution, for what he’d done. Had there ever been?

  TWENTY-THREE

  IT WAS an odd room. Because of the construction of the building, it should have had an outside window, but it didn’t. Neither did it really look like a proper office. There was a desk and a telephone, but books were haphazardly stacked all over it, and more books spilled over from the bookcase beyond. The television was on, showing a game in which men and women who were supposed not to know each other were romantically paired, and Lambert was propped on the edge of the desk, watching it. At O’Farrell’s entry, he turned like a man surprised and then waved him in.

  “Good to see you,” Lambert said, as if their last meeting had been a long time ago. “Don’t these programs blow your mind! Can you imagine making yourself look stupid in front of millions of people!”

  “I’ve never seen it before,” O’Farrell said. “But no, I can’t imagine it.”

  Lambert held the remote control in his hand for several moments before reluctantly switching the television off and turning his full attention upon O’Farrell. They fascinate me,” he said. “Just fascinate me.”

  Definitely a psychologist, O’Farrell thought. He supposed it had been obvious but he’d hoped Lambert wasn’t. He looked around for shapes to fit into holes but couldn’t see any. There were couches and chairs around a dead fire-place and two extension telephones on side tables. There were a lot of large plants in pots. O’Farrell recognized a rubber tree; its leaves were very dirty and dry. All the plants sagged from lack of water.

  Lambert gestured vaguely toward the easy chairs and couches and said, “Make yourself at home. You like some coffee? I’ve just made some fresh coffee.”

  “Thank you,” O’Farrell said. He was indifferent to the coffee but it pleased him to have Lambert fetch and carry for him. Why? he asked himself at once. Careful; he wasn’t the psychologist.

  Lambert served the coffee with powdered cream and sugar in little pots on the side. With his head still bent, the man said, “So you killed her? The wrong target?”

  O’Farrell blinked at the abruptness. “Yes,” he said. His headache wasn’t too bad, considering the previous day’s intake, but he felt tired, a
lthough he’d slept.

  “It was an accident.”

  “How the hell can you say that!”

  “You intend to kill her?”

  “You know I didn’t!”

  “So what else can it be but an accident?”

  “I wired the car, for Christ’s sake, turned it into one fucking great bomb! How can planting a load of explosives in a vehicle, which blows up and kills a person, be minimized as an accident!”

  Lambert had been standing. Now he took his own coffee to an opposite chair. “What about Rivera? What if he’d turned the key and he’d been the person killed?”

  O’Farrell frowned. “What about it? I’ve gone through all the evidence against him. He’s guilty; involved in criminal activity against the interests and security of this country.”

  “So it’s okay to blow him away! No conscience problem there!”

  This was like getting into the ring with a far superior boxer constantly able to jab past your defenses. O’Farrell said, “That is the function I am employed to carry out on behalf of the United States of America.”

  “Well recited!” Lambert mocked. “You comfortable with that?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Why of course? Where’s the natural consequence come in?”

  O’Farrell was sweating and put his cup down before he spilled it. This man was bewildering him. Hopefully he said, “There are some people, a few, who are beyond normal parameters; beyond the law, if you like. People capable of great harm, great hurt. The judgment against them is not reached by a court of law, but it is as fair and impartial as if it were.”

  “Hitler … Stalin … Amin. Killing saves lives,” Lambert completed. “I’m familiar with the list; it’s a cliché. You know what? I don’t think you believe that. Maybe once, but not anymore.”

  O’Farrell was glad he was sitting down because his head was swirling. The ache was worse, too. He thought he saw an escape and went for it. “It’s an academic debate anyway, isn’t it?”

  “Why?” asked Lambert.

  “I’m hardly likely to be used again, after this debacle, am I?”

  “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.”