“Be careful,” Erickson said.
O’Farrell turned to look directly at the man, genuinely astonished.
Erickson appeared embarrassed, too. He lifted and dropped his hands in a meaningless gesture and said, “It’s never easy,” which was neither an apology nor an improvement.
“Is there anything else?” O’Farrell asked curtly.
“In London … anywhere else you have to go … you’ll keep in touch through the embassy’s CIA channels,” Petty said.
Why did they keep on saying things that were routine! Careful, O’Farrell thought; it would be wrong to overreact and read into remarks significance that was not there. Routine or not, they had to be said. There could be no misunderstanding or mistake. “Of course,” he said.
“And we’ll pouch anything technical you need in the diplomatic bag,” Erickson said.
Just like Cuba pouched its cocaine, thought O’Farrell; things to kill with, one way or the other. He stood, looking down at the two seated men. “I wonder if it really will be taken as a warning?”
“That’s the message,” Petty said. “It’ll be heard, believe me.”
The two remained on the bench, watching O’Farrell walk back toward Pennsylvania Avenue.
“Well?” Petty asked.
Erickson made an uncertain rocking motion with his hand. “Okay, I think.”
“Symmons isn’t often wrong.”
“There’s always a first time.”
“There can’t ever be a first time.”
“Sorry,” Erickson apologized. “Figure of speech. Sorry about telling him to be careful, too. That was stupid of me.”
“Yes,” Petty said, unforgiving. “It was. Very stupid. Did you smell booze on his breath?”
“Before noon! You’ve got to be kidding!”
“That’s why I put the pipe out, to be sure.”
“Were you?”
“Pretty sure.”
“I didn’t get it myself; I would have expected to.”
“Yes,” Petty agreed. “Perhaps I was mistaken.”
“That final remark was interesting,” the deputy suggested.
“About being taken as a warning?”
Erickson nodded. “You think that indicated any doubt, about the validity of what he does?”
“It sometimes happens. I would have thought he was pretty straight about the morality, though.”
“There was a sharp reaction when he heard drugs were involved,” Erickson said. “His kids ever get mixed up with any shit?”
Unknown to O’Farrell—although suspected by him because it was obvious—everything in his background and family had been examined by the Agency. Petty shook his head. “Squeaky clean, both of them.”
“Maybe just a natural response to narcotics.”
“I think we should take precautions.” Petty decided.
“More than usual?” There was always surveillance.
Petty nodded. “Just to cover ourselves.”
“Probably wise,” Erickson concurred.
“You were right,” Petty announced.
“Right?”
“It’s a great day to sit in the sun.”
That night O’Farrell deliberately made three full martinis, which he drank unseen in the den, and he insisted upon opening the Napa Valley wine to drink with the steaks. Jill only had one glass and O’Farrell limited himself to two, wanting to prove to her—and to himself—that he could leave some in the bottle for another occasion.
He took her abruptly in bed, without any foreplay, and she was obviously startled and then responded, and it was good for both of them.
Afterward she said, “That was practically rape!”
“I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t say I minded.”
“I might have to go away for a while.”
“Where?”
“Something to check out down south first. Then Europe, possibly.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.” As quickly as possible, he thought. Get it over with.
“I’ve got some time coming,” said Jill. “I might go up to Chicago.”
“Why don’t you do that?”
“I’m glad that thing with drugs at Billy’s school was a false alarm.”
“So am I, if it really were a false alarm.”
“You want to know something?”
“What?”
“I’m so very happy and content. You happy?”
“Of course,” O’Farrell said. Dear God, how he wished that were true.
TEN
O’FARRELL REMEMBERED the first time very well. He could recall, vividly, every operation, of course, but the first most clearly of all. He had not been with the Agency then. Seconded to it from his special-duty unit in Vietnam, he had been on a deep penetration probe over the border into Cambodia, just himself and two other full-time CIA officers, checking a report that the village headman near Vinh Long was a primary intelligence source for North Vietnamese coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And actually come upon the bastard huddled among his communist contacts, identifying American positions on a map on the ground between them.
It was O’Farrell’s introduction to the importance of forethought; his aptitude test, as well, for the job that the Agency would offer when he finished his army tour, although he was never to know it had been such a test. He’d actually moved, without the slightest sound, in the bamboo thicket from which they were watching, bringing up the M-16 to wipe out every one of the motherfuckers. And then felt the restraining hand upon his arm and looked up to see the CIA supervisor, Jerry Stone, shaking his head and then gesturing for them to pull back.
It had been the following day when he killed the headman, without any compunction. It was a war situation and people were killed in wars. And he knew, unquestionably, that the man was guilty. He’d carried out that execution in front of the man’s own villagers as a warning against cooperating with the enemy. And Stone had found the map in the man’s hooch, and they’d set up the ambushes at every U.S. emplacement they knew to be targeted by the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong and shot all sorts of shit out of them when they hit. The body count had been thirty-five. He’d been awarded a Bronze Star for distinguished service.
As a professional serving soldier, O’Farrell had never had any difficulty over Vietnam. He’d been proud to go—wanted to go—and serve his country. He saw it as a simple black-and-white conflict, the way his father had seen the war in Korea, freedom versus communism. It had been easier for him, he supposed, and easier still for his father, because they knew about communism, the way it should be known about. Personally. His mother had only been a child, little older than nine, he guessed, when she’d been smuggled out of Latvia, but she’d been able to recall what it had been like and tell him about it—every detail—when she’d felt he was old enough. She told him how Soviet soldiers had come into Klaipeda and raped her mother and how they would have raped her, although she was only a child, if the woman hadn’t refused to tell them her hiding place, in the chimney inglenook. How she’d crouched there, hearing it happen, and afterward heard her mother murdered in their anger at not being able to find a girl they knew to be there somewhere, even though they practically ripped the house apart. And the less personal stories. How anyone bravely stupid enough to oppose the Soviet annexation was either deported or slaughtered, all freedom crushed underfoot. Of the secret police and the all-too-eager informants and the forcible induction of all the able-bodied men into the Russian army, an induction from which her father had escaped only by taking her on an apparently suicidal rowboat voyage across the Baltic to Karlskrona.
The opposition to Vietnam that arose at home had bewildered him; still did. He had never been able to understand why the draft dodgers and the flag burners and the protesters couldn’t comprehend the reality. America’s mistake had not been fighting in Vietnam. It had been not fighting enough, making it a limited war that stopped at a dividing line instead of going right on up into Hanoi. If J
ohnson or Nixon had done that, hundreds, thousands, of lives would have been saved, just as thousands of lives were saved by what he did. Vietnam would now be unified and free. And the war would have ended years earlier than it had, and without that humiliating claptrap about peace with honor, which had been nothing of the sort, but rather America being ass-whipped by a bunch of peasants in lampshade hats and black pyjamas.
The FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign came on at the same time as the announcement and O’Farrell obeyed, gazing through the window at the flatness of Florida. Why the doubts then? Why the doubts and the need for a quick drink to steady himself and the constant self-examination? Intellectually—although he never conceded it emotionally—he had difficulty with the Hitler and Stalin and Amin analogy. But he sincerely believed, he told himself, that a lot of lives, and suffering and hardship and misery, had been saved by what he’d done. After all, he’d carried out his own investigation every time and studied every piece of information. And a lot of lives would be saved if he were satisfied with this and took out a diplomat abusing his privileges by trafficking in drugs and guns. It would be difficult, for Christ’s sake, to come up with any combination that caused more deaths and suffering and hardship and misery than drugs and guns.
You know what drugs are? he’d asked Billy.
And the answer: Stuff that makes you feel funny. Boom, boom and the Coke container was breached by the space invader. Easy, he told himself; don’t make it personal. He shouldn’t have reacted so vehemently in front of Petty and Erickson. Got away with it, though; still, not a mistake he should make again. Shouldn’t make any mistakes; couldn’t make any mistakes.
O’Farrell became conscious of the stewardess in the aisle and looked toward her. She was a milk-fed, apple-cheeked blonde and professionally pretty, like a doll; there had to be a factory somewhere producing five hundred such girls every week, already clad in the uniforms of the world’s airlines.
“I need your tray table up in the seat in front of you, and I need to take your glass,” she said. The teeth were capped and perfect, like everything else about her. He wondered if she were still a virgin and was surprised at the turn of thought.
O’Farrell restored the tiny table and handed her the glass; three but it had been a boring trip, although there had been time to think. And the gin hadn’t touched him at all. Sober as a judge. Wasn’t that what he was, a judge appointed to carry out a full and complete inquiry and to reach a verdict properly befitting the crime? No, he thought, in immediate contradiction. His responsibility was the sentence, not the verdict. The verdict had already been reached. Another contradiction. Returned. But still to be carried out.
O’Farrell was working professionally, which imposed many patterns. An important one was untraceable invisibility. So he disdained any thought of a hotel, cruising around the town until he located a motel on Apalachee Parkway and limiting his association with any staff to the single act of checking in.
He was at the detention building fifteen minutes ahead of the Washington-arranged interview. There was a bar opposite, and he knew he had time, but he entered the government building, pleased with his self-control. O’Farrell endured the expected affability of the local officer, agreeing that drugs were a bitch and the shortages of enforcement resources were a bitch and changing policies were a bitch and that the constant infighting between the various federal agencies was a bitch, but that this was a good bust and there was going to be a lot of promotional mileage out of it.
O’Farrell insisted on entering the interview room first so that Rodgers had to be the person coming to him. He didn’t stand when the man entered. When the escort asked if he should stay, O’Farrell barely shook his head so that the prisoner would see the contemptuous dismissal of the idea that Rodgers might be any sort of physical risk.
Because he was still on remand, Rodgers had been allowed to retain his own clothes, a cut-to-the-skin black shirt, open at the neck, and designer jeans that O’Farrell guessed had been additionally tailored, so perfectly did they fit. The loafers were Gucci. All the jewelry had been impounded, but there was a thin white ring marking the skin around the man’s sun-bronzed neck. There was also a wider band of white on his tanned wrist and the pinky finger of his left hand. Everything would have been gold, O’Farrell guessed; heavy gold. Rodgers was exercise lean, tightly curled hair close to his scalp.
“You my man?” Rodgers said, still at the door. The teeth were white and even, like the stewardess’s on the plane.
“Sit down!” O’Farrell ordered, gesturing to the seat on the other side of the table.
Rodgers did but reversed the chair to straddle it like he was astride a horse, arms crossed over the round of its back. Christ! thought O’Farrell. Then: Don’t get upset, personally involved. Then: Stuff that makes you feel funny. Just feet away—six or seven feet away—was one of the bastards providing shit to make kids feel funny.
“So, you my man?” Rodgers’s nails were perfectly manicured.
“Can you count?”
“What sort of question is that? ’Course I can count!”
O’Farrell splayed his right hand in front of the other man’s face and said, “So count,” opening and closing his fingers seven times. If the asshole wanted it played macho-man rules, it was all right by him.
“Thirty-five,” Rodgers said.
“Years,” O’Farrell added. “That’s the max: thirty-five years. I checked with the District Attorney. And that’s what they’re going for, the maximum, no parole, because you haven’t got a defense that Perry Mason would even consider. You’re thirty-three. I checked that, too. So you’re sixty-eight when you get out. You any idea how difficult it is to get any pussy when you’re sixty-eight?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Facts,” O’Farrell said. “I’m talking facts.”
“Haven’t they told you, for Christ’s sake?”
“Told me what?”
“I want to cooperate! Do a deal!”
“They told me.”
“So what …?” Rodgers faded away, confused.
“I want you to understand from the beginning,” O’Farrell said quietly. “You’re going to tell me everything true, no bullshit, no fucking around. True from the very word go. Because I’m going to check and double-check and if I find just one thing wrong—” O’Farrell narrowed his thumb against his forefinger, so there was practically no space between—”just that much wrong, I’m going to dump on you. I’m going to go back to the DA and I’m going to say that Paul Rodgers is a scumbag and I don’t deal with scumbags and you can throw the book at him. Sixty-eight years old and trying to get pussy … Just think of it.”
“Jesus!” the drug runner exclaimed, physically recoiling.
It had been overdone, O’Farrell conceded; theatrical, just like Petty and Erickson. “You understand?”
“ ’Course I understand!” Rodgers said. “You think I don’t know what I got to lose!”
The bombast and swagger had gone, O’Farrell thought; so it had been worthwhile. “Good. So what is it you’ve got to tell me?”
The smile came back, a sly expression. “Haven’t we got something to tell each other?”
Careful, thought O’Farrell. He said, “Like what?”
“Like the exchange. What I get for what you get.”
“You don’t listen, do you?” O’Farrell said. “I’m not offering you shit. You’re looking at thirty-five years, and you’re going to go on looking at thirty-five years until I’m convinced you’ve leveled with me. On everything.”
“This way I got nothing! I’m dependent on you all the way!”
“Don’t you forget it,” O’Farrell said. “Forget that for a moment and you’re screwed.”
“I dunno,” Rodgers said, shrugging and looking away. “I dunno this is such a good idea.”
Would he personally be off the hook if this bastard withdrew cooperation? Probably not; Petty talked of there being a file at Lafayette Square. He
said, “So what other shot you think you’ve got?”
“I need a guarantee.”
“You need a miracle.”
The man’s lower lip was going back and forth between his teeth, like Ellen’s had, in Chicago. “I just didn’t expect it to be done this way, is all.”
O’Farrell exaggerated his sigh of impatience, moving as if to stand. “Okay, so you’ve nothing to tell me! I’ve wasted my time and that makes me mad, but you’re the guy digging the grave. Enjoy life in the slammer, jerk.”
He actually began to rise and Rodgers said, “No! Wait!” He made a lowering gesture with his hand. “Okay, we’ll talk—I’ll talk. Just don’t go.”
For several moments O’Farrell remained neither standing nor sitting, appearing unsure whether to agree. Then he sat and said, “Okay. So talk.”
Rodgers swallowed and looked away, assembling his thoughts. “Been doing it for quite a while,” the man began awkwardly. “Years. Had a good run. Because I was careful, see. Word got around. Made a reputation.”
“Flying from where?” O’Farrell asked.
“Colombia, always Colombia.” Rodgers extended his hand, palm cupped upward. “They got the trade like that. Bolivia and Peru might be bigger growers, but Colombia controls the trade.”
“In what?”
“Coke, man! Marijuana too. And pills. Methaqualone.”
O’Farrell thought the man spoke like a salesman, offering his wares. Stuff that makes you feel funny. He said. “Whereabouts in Colombia?”
“All over. I guess Medellin more than most.”
“And to where?”
“All over again, in the early years,” said Rodgers. “Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, Mexico. Couple of times—three actually—I even flew into Florida. Too dangerous, though. Had to abandon the airplane every time because I couldn’t refuel.”
“Dates!” O’Farrell insisted at once. There would be an official record of abandoned aircraft.
“Dates?”
“The month and the year when you abandoned aircraft in Florida.”
Rodgers frowned with the difficulty of recall. “June … I think it was June … 1987. Then again in September that year. January eighty-eight. I’m sure about that, the nearest I came to getting busted—”
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