O'Farrell's Law

by Brian Freemantle

  “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 no.”

  “What did that signify?”

  “‘I’m not a quitter,’” Lambert quoted.

  “I don’t think it’s sufficient, any of it,” Erickson said. “So far we’ve lost nothing. We’ve been lucky. Let’s cut loose while we’re still ahead.”

  “That’s my feeling, too,” Petty said.

  McCarthy held out his glass to be replenished, and when Lambert returned with it, the Plans director said to the psychologist, “What decision would you make in our position?”

  Lambert stared down at the man for several moments. “It’s possible.” the psychologist said. “Possible but dangerous. On balance, you’re going to need a hell of a lot of luck.”

  “It’s always dangerous,” Sneider said.

  “I’ve got an idea,” McCarthy said. “A hell of an idea.”

  “We cut adrift from O’Farrell?” Sneider anticipated, for once wrongly.

  The Plans Director frowned at his deputy. “Christ, no!” he said. “Whatever made you think that?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  JILL WASN’T there when he got back to Alexandria. Three or four days earlier, before the sessions with Lambert, it would have thrown him for a loop, because he’d telephoned from Fort Pearce hours ahead, telling her of his supposed return on the afternoon British Airways flight. As it was, he contained the reaction to mild surprise. Jill was conscientious and often worked late at the clinic; hours sometimes, although he didn’t think she would tonight because she knew he was getting back.

  He made a drink and wandered about the house, feeling its familiarity wrap comfortingly around him. He felt safe, secure. The impression reminded him of what Lambert had said, at one of their sessions; the first, he thought, although he wasn’t sure. The man had been right. Climbing under the bedcovers was just what he’d wanted to do; hide for a long time in the darkness, where no one could find him. Know he was there, even. He’d needed Lambert, needed the man more than he could calculate at this moment. Not that he could forget what had happened in London. It had been appalling and would always be with him. But Lambert had put it into perspective for him; he didn’t have any problem with the word “accident” anymore. Because t
hat was what it had been: an appalling, ugly accident. But accidents happened. How had Lambert put it? The very fact that this was the first, ever, showed how careful he was, how professional. Something like that.

  It had been an incredible relief to be able to talk as he’d talked to Lambert. He knew the feeling was ridiculous, after so short a time, but he found it easy to think of Lambert as a friend, the way the man had asked him to. Think of me as a friend, someone you can call and talk about anything, anytime. O’Farrell wasn’t sure that he would. It was all right this time, because of the circumstances. He’d needed the man. But to want to talk through things again might make Lambert think he was sonic soft of goofball, one of those goofballs who kept regular weekly appointments with a shrink and couldn’t function without them. Then again, he might. It wasn’t something he had to decide right now.

  The tour inevitably ended in the den. The copied archive and the fading photograph that Jill had collected for him were still packaged, waiting to be refiled. He’d known the Agency kept tabs on him—it was a logical precaution—but he’d never guessed it was so complete. O’Farrell jerked his head up at a thought, gazing around the bookshelves and the furniture, at everything. Would the house be wired? With Jill out every day, the technical people would have had every opportunity to set a system up. O’Farrell started to move and then stopped, sitting back in his chair. He’d be wasting his time. The micro-technology now was so advanced that even an expert, like he was supposed to be, wouldn’t find anything. It was an eerie thought; unsettling. He didn’t bother with the files. The copied photograph was disappointing; his great-grandfather looked different, oddly, absurdly, more like the gunslingers he’d hunted than the lawman he had been.

  O’Farrell checked his watch. He’d been home for over an hour. Where was Jill? An emergency, perhaps? But why hadn’t she called, or had a secretary call?

  The clinic receptionist was a bouncy black girl named Annabelle who said hi and how was London and she wanted to go there someday. If there were an electronic monitor, Langley wasn’t going to be pleased, O’Farrell thought. Annabelle, confused, said Jill had left hours ago, around lunchtime, without saying where she was going. O’Farrell’s immediate thought was Chicago, and he was relieved that Ellen was in the apartment. Ellen was as surprised as the receptionist at the clinic; she’d spoken to her mother the previous evening but there’d been no arrangements for her to fly up. O’Farrell said there had to be some misunderstanding at his end and it was unimportant, carrying on the conversation that was necessary. Billy was fine and Patrick had promised to clear up the arrears and maintain both the alimony and child support in the future, so she didn’t think it was necessary to start any legal pressure at the moment. Patrick had gotten a job as a car salesman and the commissions were good and wasn’t that terrific? O’Farrell sadly decided that Jill was right, that their daughter still loved the bastard, and agreed it was terrific if the payments kept coming. They would, said Ellen. This time Patrick had really promised. He was seeing Billy again, too. The previous weekend he’d bought the boy an electrically controlled car.

  “So how was your trip?”

  O’Farrell waited for the stomach drop, but there was nothing. He said, “Just work,” and his voice stayed perfectly even.

  “Nothing exciting at all?”

  O’Farrell swallowed. “Nothing,” he said, with more difficulty.

  “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you, too.”

  O’Farrell gratefully replaced the receiver, filling his mind with the immediate problem. So where was Jill? She was a woman of habit, of regularity, someone who didn’t take afternoons off without saying where she would be. He felt the beginnings of concern. And then of helplessness. He could try the police covering the district where the clinic was, to see if there’d been any reports of an accident, but what then? Ask for the car number to be posted and circulated, maybe, but they wouldn’t do that, unless he had cause to think she’d been involved in some crime; there had to be dozens of husbands and wives late home every night. He was right, he told himself; there were dozens of husbands and wives late home every night, for all sorts of perfectly understandable reasons. So why the hell was he panicking! Every night wormed its way into his mind; Annabelle had said Jill left at lunchtime. Maybe Lambert would—O’Farrell started to think and then stopped, closing out the thought.

  He went back to the kitchen and mixed another drink. He’d give her a little longer, another hour maybe. Then the police. Call other people at the clinic to see if she’d said anything to them. Who? O’Farrell squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember the names. Jill always seemed to be talking about people she worked with, so much so that he usually switched off, and now he couldn’t remember the names. There was a Mary, he thought. And an Anne. Or was that the same person, Maryanne? And what about surnames, to look them up in the book? They wouldn’t be at the clinic, not this late. The night staff would tell him, once he’d satisfied them who he was. Just another hour. Then he’d start calling around.

  O’Farrell carried his drink with him to the front of the house, where he could look out onto the street. It was very quiet, fully dark now, all the parking spaces used up by returning residents without garages. There’d be the cars to clean over the weekend. O’Farrell looked forward to doing it; mundane, certainly, but familiar, secure by its very ordinariness.

  Their garage door was electric, operated by an impulse from a control box in either vehicle, and it was the unlocking click and then the operational whir he heard, seconds before he saw Jill’s car. The inner door from the garage led into the kitchen, and O’Farrell was already there when Jill came through. She seemed taken aback to see him and said, “Where the hell have you been!”

  “Where the hell have you been?” he said. In his concern he sounded angry, which he wasn’t.

  “All the way out to Dulles is where I’ve been,” said Jill. “I decided on a surprise, so I went to meet the plane. And you weren’t on it, weren’t even booked, when I checked.”

  O’Farrell reached out, pulling her to him, to gain time to think. And not just to think. He wanted to feel her, hold her close and know the reassurance of her being there. She’d always been there. Always would be. What would he do if Jill went out one morning and fired the ignition and literally exploded, simply didn’t exist anymore!

  She broke away from him. “Darling!” she said. “You’re shaking! What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

  “Nothing,” he said, recovering. “Tired, that’s all. Would you believe it! I set out to surprise you!”

  “What?”

  “After I telephoned I realized I wasn’t going to need as much clearing-up time after all. I got to the airport in time for the TWA flight through New York, so I canceled the original reservation and switched. Got here two hours earlier.”

  “You know what?” said Jill, smiling and believing him. “We must have passed each other on the way to and from the airport.”

  O’Farrell hugged her again, anxious for the closeness. Mouth in her hair, against her ear, he said, “That’s what must have happened.” It hadn’t occurred to her to disbelieve, to doubt.

  “You’re still shaking.”

  “It isn’t anything. Tiredness, like I said. Plane was crowded; tour groups.”

  Jill moved farther into the kitchen, perching on a breakfast stool. “I had another idea, after the first surprise,” she confessed. “If you’d felt like it, I was going to suggest dinner somewhere instead of coming straight home.”

  She was dressed in her newest suit, the one she had picked up at a Saks sale. “Great idea!” he said.

  She shook her head. “You’re tired.”

  “Nothing a shower can’t fix in five minutes.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “We’re home now. I’ll make something here.”

  O’Farrell didn’t want to disappoint her, but he thought it would be dangerous to press too hard. So much for the woman who never did anything
unexpected! He said,

  “Absolutely positive,” she said.

  He didn’t think she was. Effusively he said, “Tomorrow night! Anywhere you like!” knowing it wouldn’t be the same, because there wouldn’t be any spontaneity.

  “We’ll think about it,” she said.

  It had to be a Lean Cuisine lasagna and she joined him in some wine, and O’Farrell gave the prepared account of what he was supposed to have done and seen in London. Telling her of his call to Ellen made the opening for Jill to talk of her time in Chicago while he had been away. Like O’Farrell, she wasn’t impressed with Patrick’s sudden responsibility. She put at three months the time it would take the man to lose the job or fail with the payments or possibly both. The drug scare at Billy’s school was so long ago they didn’t even talk about it anymore.

  It was obvious Jill expected him to make love to her that night and he did, although it wasn’t easy and he had to fake it. He didn’t think she guessed and he was fairly sure she climaxed.

  The following night they did go out, combining an orchestral recital at the Kennedy Center with dinner at the restaurant there, the river view making up for the food. The outing really did lack spontaneity, but Jill said it was wonderful. Abruptly O’Farrell said he really didn’t know what he’d do without her, and Jill laughed and said he’d never have to find out, would he?

  O’Farrell tried hard for the normality he craved. He found a reference to his great-grandfather in a history of western American exploration to add to the collection and on the first Saturday cleaned the cars, disturbed at how dirty and neglected they had become. There was even a rust stain on the Ford.

  The normality didn’t last long. The summons from Petty came the second week, a summons to Lafayette Square itself, which was unusual. When O’Farrell entered, he saw that Erickson wasn’t present, which was even more unusual, but he hoped he knew the reason. The air was thick with the incenselike smell from the perpetual pipe.