Howard remained where he was, stretched out on his back, eyes flickering with feigned sleep. Farr waited, refusing to be dismissed that way either. Howard lay unmoving; once, his mouth actually broke into a quickly recovered smirk. It became a long silence, a stretched challenge. Farr snapped first. Moving as quietly as he could, he reached the bottom of the bed and, before Howard had any idea what was happening, heaved it upwards and sideways. The cot was tethered with a restraining cable-chain to the floor, but there was sufficient length in the chain to allow Farr to throw his son onto the floor. Howard was taken completely by surprise, actually screaming in fright as he was suddenly hurled to the ground. The boy landed badly on his side, jarring an elbow and a splayed leg that he had instinctively put out to save himself; he screamed out again, this time in pain.
“What the fu—” he managed to shout before Farr kicked him. All the broker had intended by the sudden, abrupt upheaval was to bestir the stupid bloody little fool; literally to make him sit up. But when Howard hit the floor, the frustration and impotence he felt at the kid’s contemptuous insolence carried him on—so the kick was instinctive. But not completely. Instinctive would have been unthinking, but in the final seconds, when the movement had actually started, Farr knew what he was doing and he wanted to make it hurt. He caught his son directly in the stomach, just below and slightly to the right of the rib cage. The boy’s breath screeched from him in winded agony, and then Farr kicked him again—not so cleanly this time because Howard was already covering himself up. The boy’s arm took most of the force but there was again some contact with his stomach. Howard was sick, badly, the vomit gushing from him and covering him because of the way he was curled. He was trying to cry out but, without any breath, the only sound he could make was a lost, gasping whimper.
Farr looked down, horrified at what he’d done. He wanted to say he was sorry and that he wasn’t going to abandon the boy, even though Howard seemed resigned to abandoning himself; and he wanted to kneel on the floor, among the vomit, and tell him that he knew how frightened Howard was, but that it would all work out in the end. But he did none of it. He looked down at the twitching, groveling figure and felt sick himself at the stink of the vomit which was already staining the floor. Then he turned and hammered at the door to be let out.
Outside, he fell weakly against the wall, lips tight together against collapsing into tears, eyes squeezed shut to close out the last hours and the acknowledgment of where he was and what he’d seen and heard and done: running, as he’d sneered at Howard for doing.
“You all right?”
Reluctantly, Farr opened his eyes in response to the concern of the attendant at the security desk and nodded. He said, “He needs help. We had a fight. He’d been ill. Would you help him please …?” After a pause, he said, “I don’t think I can.”
“I’ll do it,” said the man.
“Thank you.” Farr pushed himself away from the wall’s support and walked slowly back toward Halpern’s office. He hesitated before entering, trying to compose himself. It didn’t work; as he opened the door, Halpern looked up and frowned. “What happened?”
“I lost my temper. Beat him up—attacked him when he wasn’t expecting it …” Farr slumped into a chair, bent forward, and began to cry. “Christ!” he said. “Oh Christ, what have I done!”
“Done what a lot of fathers would do,” said Halpern evenly. “Have done.”
“I kicked him!” said Farr, confused by the other man’s lack of reaction. “He’s back there lying in his own puke.”
“I think Howard’s lain in his own puke enough times for it not to be an unusual experience,” said the director.
“I just walked out after I did it,” continued Farr, still disbelieving. “I wanted to apologize … say I was sorry. But I couldn’t.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” said Halpern.
Farr scrubbed his hand over his face, embarrassed at his collapse. “What do you mean?”
“You let him know how you feel, physically feel. Is that such a bad thing?”
“He’s hurt! I kicked and hurt him!”
“Good. Now he knows you hurt, too.”
“You’re not upset? Think I’ve done something to hinder the treatment?”
“Not particularly,” said Halpern, still mildly. “We’ve hardly got anywhere with Howard. He feels you’ve neglected him; which I know you feel, too.” Halpern waved his hand warningly. “I don’t want to talk about it, either way. There’re millions of kids treated far worse than Howard who don’t go on drugs. And, like I told you before, plenty better off who do turn on. That’s not the point. The point is that he feels it. So today you kicked hell out of him. We haven’t got very far with words; maybe you achieved something by causing him pain.”
“That sounds like some sort of experiment,” said Farr.
“A lot of drug treatment—attempted rehabilitation—is some sort of experiment,” said Halpern. “Substitution—trying to maintain a heroin addict on methadone—hasn’t worked because methadone is more addictive than heroin. Psychiatry can sometimes help, but no one’s yet established that drug abuse is an indication of mental illness. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. It comes down very simplistically to whatever works works.”
“And you don’t yet know what’s going to work on Howard?”
“No. We think we’ve got some pointers but it’s still too early to say. We knew he was going to run, of course.”
“So did I.”
“We let it happen,” said Halpern.
“Let it happen?”
The director nodded. “Getting away was becoming his focus: all he thought about. We had to break that focus. So we let him go. We released him from security and watched him run for it and told the police, who maintained an easy surveillance—because I didn’t want him to score—so we could pick him up whenever we wanted to. We let him make the bus station and think he’d succeeded and then we picked him up. I wanted to tilt him off balance, but only slightly. I think one of the ways of rehabilitating Howard—or any drug abuser—is to restore, not take away, their confidence. But in this case I thought I had to take away Howard’s confidence about escaping.”
“How can you guarantee that he won’t try again?”
“I want him to try again,” said the director. “If he doesn’t, then he’ll be apathetic, and I don’t want him to lose the will to fight—because it’s that will I want to channel. He’ll run again and we’ll pick him up again, and if he does it the third time we’ll pick him up a third time. We’ll go on until he gets it out of his system.”
“What happens if he beats you! Actually manages to get away?”
“The court entrusted Howard into my care because they were pretty sure that wouldn’t happen, Mr. Farr. We’ve had a lot of people far more determined and far more able than Howard, and we’ve managed to stop them.”
“Experimental,” said Farr.
“I already admitted it was,” said Halpern.
“With me, too!” said Farr in sudden realization. “Your message said Howard had escaped, was on the run. You’ve just told me the whole thing was set up!”
The director nodded once more, unabashed. “Howard thinks he made a run for it and that the moment you heard—you, a father whom he thinks doesn’t care—you came running. By coming here today, you proved that you cared. If I’d warned you in advance, you couldn’t have carried it off properly. Annoyed?”
Farr shook his head slowly. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have lost my temper like I did. Hurt him.”
“What’s wrong with losing your temper!” demanded Halpern. He paused. “When you first came into this office you started to cry and you were as embarrassed as hell, because grownup men don’t cry. For a time you were more worried at crying in front of me than you were at having kicked hell out of Howard, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” admitted Farr.
“There’s nothing wrong in crying, Mr. Farr. In fact, it’s a very good releas
e. Like losing your temper occasionally is a good release. Howard thinks his escape was genuine and he thinks your concern was genuine—which it was—and he thinks your anger and your breakdown was genuine. Which it was, also.”
“You going to pull any more tricks like this?” asked Farr.
“I don’t know,” said Halpern. “I don’t plan to, not at the moment.”
“Will you tell me, if you do?”
Halpern shook his head. “Not if I think you’re an integral part of it and need to behave in a logical, natural way. I’m not interested in hurting or not hurting your feelings, Mr. Farr. I’m interested in rehabilitating Howard. I’m not running some sort of experimental circus here, believe me,” said Halpern earnestly. “By which I mean that I’m not using Howard as some kind of guinea pig. Or you. Whatever I do will only have one object: helping Howard. Tell me something. You ever hit Howard before? When he was a kid, I mean?”
Farr stared down at the floor for few moments. “I don’t think so. I can’t remembering doing so.”
Halpern nodded, smiling. “Must have come as a hell of a shock,” he said.
Although Brennan and Seymour were not specifically attached to a particular task force—working instead directly from headquarters—they still attended the biannual review conference of task force controllers and senior personnel, because of their current involvement. It was held in the Hoover building on Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue, in one of the fourth-floor rooms large enough to hold such a gathering. The individual task force commanders each gave an address on their activities and successes of the previous six months and then a deputy director of the headquarters intelligence unit collated the separate histories into a countrywide review of the Bureau’s antinarcotic efforts. The final speaker was the director himself, a soft-spoken, hesitant man who had been given control of the FBI after a career at the bar as a trial judge and who was therefore resented by professional FBI men as a political appointee. The director’s speech was little more than a repetition of the earlier presented overview, but with a lawyer’s ability to isolate telling points he picked up and insisted upon one fact.
“During the last six months, cocaine seizures increased by a total of practically one and a half tons over the previous six months. That can be interpreted in two ways; either our interception—our task forces—are winning. Or the traffickers are increasing their activities. It is to answer that question that I have specifically ordered the intelligence unit to prepare a report for submission to the President.”
“Why the fuck bother!” Brennan demanded in a whisper to his partner. “The answer’s obvious. The bad guys are winning. Like they’ve always won.”
“At least we’re in business,” said Seymour.
“I’ve sent a message through to Rivera in Bogotá,” said Brennan. “Asked him to get into contact.”
13
The U.S. embassy in Bogotá is a bunker of a place, a mesh-protected, sealed-off building with a zigzag approach tunnel to prevent the rush of sudden attack. Harry Green had his office in the main building, part of the CIA residency to which he was nominally attached as an FBI liaison officer, but this day he did not leave from there. Because of Brennan’s instruction from Washington, he went first in the morning to the offices of the Drug Enforcement Administration, whose building was across the road from the main embassy, in a separate low-rise office block. Green was an affable, eager career officer, still adolescent-plump from college junk food and a dislike of exercise, glad of the opportunity the Colombian posting gave him and determined to succeed in it. Despite his ambition, he wasn’t pushy and he got the deference just right, properly respectful without being servile. The CIA bureau liked him and the professional diplomats liked him and the Drug Enforcement officers liked him.
José Rivera was Green’s case, passed on to him because the Colombian lawyer had made the original approach in Washington, just after the FBI had assumed control jurisdiction of America’s antinarcotic effort. Green let the DEA men know that he had somebody he hoped might be useful and indicated that he’d cooperate as much as he felt able. In return, the Enforcement officials updated him on the material they were sending to washington, material which was anyway disseminated through the joint task forces. Green listened with his usual polite attention, letting the briefing come naturally to his point of interest, not wanting to prompt or give them any clue to whom his source and contact might be. The identities of the major cocaine traffickers were public enough to be printed on a special fact sheet and Green was assured as they went through it that there were no names missing from those he already had. The names of members of the government and judiciary who were controlled by the traffickers were also well known, but this list had higher security classification: Green was permitted access within the restrictions of the DEA office but not allowed a copy of his own. It took him only seconds to ascertain that Rivera’s name did not appear under the heading of crooked lawyers.
Green was still early for the assignation—intentionally so, for he remained conscious of the lessons of training school. He strolled past the pavement sellers, discreetly checking to see if he was being followed. He decided he wasn’t, but stayed careful, joining the main thoroughfare and then crossing it so that he would be on the correct side of the road when he reached the Hilton. He turned left on entering the foyer, to the ground-floor bar with its somewhat surprising Tartan decor, managing to find a corner seat at the bar which gave him a perfect view of the door and any pursuer. He ordered a beer and sat waiting. It was several minutes before anyone else came in. A young couple, apparently engrossed in each other, went immediately to one of the tables, showing no interest in him whatsoever. Next came a man, Colombian in appearance, who also showed lack of interest. He, too, went to a table and was soon busy ordering a meal from the waiter. Green’s training told him that an observer, seeing that his quarry was only drinking, would not have risked a meal which he might have hurriedly to leave, drawing attention to himself. The FBI agent took his beer slowly, allowing six more people to enter and settle in various parts of the room; only one couple actually joined him at the bar and they were as caught up in each other as the original two had been.
Reasonably satisfied that there was no tail, Green paid but didn’t leave the hotel at once, going instead deeper into the foyer area and pretending to look at the shops, alert for any sudden exit. There wasn’t one. Green regained the road and walked further into the city, taking a right fork near the museum, heading for the meeting place. The Torquemada had been Rivera’s choice, and the FBI man hoped the lawyer had been as careful as he had been approaching it. Green circled the foyer, pausing to look at the artifact shop with its assurance of guarantees, before moving along the corridor and descending to the bar, finally sure he was alone. The lawyer was waiting in a corner seat, eyes intent upon the stairway, flickering with obvious nervousness.
“It is all right?” demanded the Colombian.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“I was extremely careful: made stops and checked. I wasn’t followed.” Green saw that the Colombian was drinking brandy and that his goblet was almost empty. When the waiter approached, Rivera finished his drink in a single, frightened gulp and nodded his acceptance of the American’s offer of another.
“It isn’t easy anymore,” protested Rivera. “All the big men are careful, after the various operations you’ve mounted. It’s not like it was.”
“There are lists,” said Green. “Records of those whom we know to be traffickers, and names too of people in the government and the law and officials who are known to be on the payroll. I checked. You’re not on them. Any of them.”
“I’d hope not,” said the lawyer. He reached out for the returning drink and gulped at it.
“The traffickers would have a pretty good idea who we know about and who we don’t. Lists, like we have. You’re safe.”
“Nothing’s happening,” reported Rivera. “Nothing that isn’t
obvious, without my telling you.”
“Nothing at all?” pressed Green. Another academy rule for a meeting like this was to get everything you could before coming to your purpose for making the meet.
“Gomez wants to see me.”
Green was sure he managed to hide his reaction. “What for?”
“I don’t know,” said the lawyer. “A phone call yesterday, asking me to come up to Medellin. Business, he said.”
“What sort of business?”
“He didn’t say.” Despite his apprehension, Rivera laughed. “What other sort of business does Gomez have?”
“I’m interested, José.”
“I’m frightened,” confessed the lawyer needlessly. “They’re very careful now, like I said.”
“I’m very careful, like I said,” reassured Green. “I’ll make sure nothing happens.”
“No one can promise that, in a country like this,” said Rivera. Embarking on a familiar theme, the lawyer added vehemently, “That’s why I went to your people in the first place. When I realized what was happening to my country, and how I was helping to let it happen by working with them. Colombia used to be a good and honorable country. Look at it now!”
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