O'Farrell's Law

by Brian Freemantle

  “What about later?”

  “They came to me in eighty-eight,” Rodgers said. “February. I got a place on the beach just outside Fort Lauderdale. Guy comes there one day. Latin, prefers to speak Spanish. Very smooth. Says he had a proposition and I think it’s a setup, and I tell him to go to hell, that I’m a property developer and I don’t know what he’s talking about. He laughs at me, says he admires my caution. But not my business ability. Says that flying one way with cargo but back again empty is a wasted commercial opportunity, which I know it is, but what’s been the alternative? I still think he’s sucking me, so I go on playing wide-eyed and innocent. Then he asks if I’m curious how he found me, and I say I am, and he tells me it was on the personal recommendation of Fabio Ochoa—”

  “Who is?” interrupted O’Farrell. He already knew but wanted Rodgers to tell him.

  “One of the big guys in Colombia … and I’m talking big. An actual member of the Cartel. I’d flown for him a few times, out of Medellin,” Rodgers said. “But it still don’t mean a thing, right? It could still have been a come-on. So I say ho-hum, diddly-dee, admitting nothing. And then he knocks me sideways. Tells me his name is Cuadrado and he knows I am doing a run the next week for Ochoa—which I was—and that when I get into Medellin, Ochoa is going to meet me personally and tell me what a one-hundred-percent guy he, Cuadrado, is. Which is exactly what happens, and now it can’t be a setup with any of you guys, right?”

  “What did Ochoa tell you?”

  “That business was expanding. There was going to be a two-way traffic, drugs outward, weapons inward. And that the risk factor was going to be cut to nil because from now on there would only be one customer, Cuba. That it was all official, right up to Castro’s crotch in Havana, so there’d be no hassle. And that Cuadrado was in the government and I was to do everything he said.”

  “You went to Cuba?”

  “That collection from Ochoa was for Cuadrado,” said Rodgers. “The airstrip is at Matanzas and it is official. Government planes, government officials, all the right stuff. Cuadrado drives me into town and gives me a fat steak and a Havana cigar and sets out the whole deal. Says they’ve hit upon the perfect enterprise, giving the capitalists—he actually said that, the capitalists—what they want and with the money from the capitalists they’re going to give the oppressed in Latin America what they want, the way to gain their freedom. All bullshit—but what the hell, I’m making more money, so he can spout crap all he wants.…”

  Freedom! thought O’Farrell. What did this oily son of a bitch know about freedom! Or those other sons of bitches in Havana! Freedom to them was maneuvering countries into becoming client states, dependent for arms or money or both, and then treating them like satellites. The Soviet Union had been doing that since 1917. He said, “We’re talking truth, agreed?”

  Rodgers looked at him warily. “So what’s the matter?”

  “Cuadrado is in the government?”

  Rodgers smiled. “Works in their Export Ministry! Isn’t that a kicker!”

  “And you’re a drug runner?”

  The grin on Rodgers’s face faded. “So?”

  “So what’s an official of the Ministry doing setting out the whole deal—your words—to the delivery boy?”

  Rodgers’s face went tight at being dismissed as a delivery boy, but he cleared it quickly. “Ochoa guaranteed me. And Cuadrado has a personal problem.”

  “Personal problem?”

  Rodgers put an outstretched finger beneath his nose and inhaled noisily. “He got too fond of sampling his own supplies.”

  “So he was high when he told you this?”

  “At thirty-five thousand feet. Feeling no pain.”

  There should be photographs of Cuadrado in CIA files, O’Farrell calculated. And the Agency should have sources in Havana to provide some background material as well. “So what else did he tell you?”

  “That the scheme was foolproof. All the ordering—the drugs too, after delivery to Cuba—would travel as diplomatic cargo; get that!” Rodgers laughed.

  “How did the weaponry come, loose or crated?” O’Farrell asked.

  “Crated; nearly always crated.”

  “That couldn’t be diplomatic cargo.”

  “Sea,” Rodgers said at once. “Like the man said, it was perfect. The majority of the supplies came from Europe, by ship. Sometimes they were rerouted during the voyage. But always to somewhere safe, where there was no hassle.”

  From the Cuban—the communist—point of view, it was perfect, O’Farrell conceded. “So that’s how it happened?”

  “Smooth as silk,” Rodgers said.

  “How many trips did you make, running guns?”

  There was another frown, for recall. “Thirty,” the man said. “It has to be thirty at least; more I guess. I didn’t really count.”

  The switch, from past to present tense and then back again, was all part of the finger-snapping, macho shit, thought O’Farrell. You my man? Black jive, in addition. Christ, what an asshole Rodgers was! Scum. Scum that got scoured out, cleaned away. Everything fumigated afterward. Stuff that makes you …

  No. Wrong. And for more than one reason. He was trying to shrug off the responsibility for what he was now committed to do, shrug it off onto another offense, onto something vaguely involving his family and an innocent, gullible, long-lashed, round-cheeked little guy who played with plastic spacemen. Billy, the risk to Billy, couldn’t be his shield, his excuse. He’d made his own decision, in a brown-dirt village square with squawking chickens and crying, pleading villagers in front of two calm-eyed, calm-limbed CIA officers. Black and white: wrong and right. Like this was wrong. He said, “Where?”

  A vague shrug. “Everywhere.”

  “What do you mean, everywhere?” The voice almost too loud, too demanding.

  “Just that, man.”

  Man. O’Farrell said, “You got a bad memory? Forgotten what we talked about, maybe?”

  “What the hell do you want?”

  “Where! That’s what I want! Where!”

  A shrug started, then stopped. “Colombia itself, a lot of times. There are guerrilla groups there, you know? FARC and M-19 …”

  “I know,” O’Farrell said shortly. “Where else?”

  The hesitation this time was not for recall, O’Farrell gauged. This time the fucker was running the other delivery places through in his mind, trying to calculate which would cause least offense.

  “I did a run to Brazil, place near Porto Alegre.” Rodgers appeared proud of the choice; the evasion.

  Brazil was a drug-producing country; it would have been small-time stuff, a few handguns to allow the local traffickers to strut their stuff, bang-bang you’re dead. “And?” Very quiet, like it didn’t really matter, but looking directly at Rodgers to show he wasn’t impressed by this bullshit.

  “Mexico! Two or three to Mexico!”

  Another producer. A border country, though, where there were frequent shoot-outs and investigating agents—Americans—had been blown away; blown away by weapons this shithead had flown in. “And?”

  “Other places.”

  “What other places!”

  Another half shrug. Then, reluctantly: “Matagalpa.”

  “What about Managua?”

  A full shrug this time. “Okay, man! So what the fuck!”

  “You supplied the Nicaraguan government!”

  “I flew a plane down, I flew a plane back. I’m a delivery boy; you said that. Who the fuck knows who I supplied?”

  “It’s a communist government; this country is supporting the rebels.”

  “And in Chile it supports the government of Ugarte Pinochet, who makes Adolf Hitler look like a wimp! And in Uruguay it supported a Nazi who ran the fucking country! And in the Philippines we supported—for how many years, man?—a guy who peed his pants all the time he watched blue movies and a wife who had more pairs of shoes than the world’s got feet! Come on! We talking actuality here or we talking fair
y tales!” Rodgers had to stop for breath. “Don’t give me philosophy, okay? I did Nam and I learned my philosophy: smart guys survive, dumb guys die. That’s all you gotta know. Aristotle and Plato? Forget ’em. Off the wall, all of them. Only one philosophy in life. Number one: número uno. Everyone else—all the governments, all the leaders—are out to fuck you, because you know what their philosophy is? Number one, that’s what. The smart guy’s philosophy of life. You do Nam?”

  No, thought O’Farrell, I didn’t do Nam. I served in Vietnam, served three extended tours. He said, “I was there.”

  “You ever know such shit?” Rodgers’s hands were out, palms again, an inviting gesture. “You ever know such shit in your life! I mean what the fuck were we there for?”

  “A principle,” O’Farrell said, and wished he hadn’t.

  “Principle! What fucking principle!” Rodgers erupted. “You know what the South Vietnamese were doing while our guys were getting blown up and killed or maimed or losing their minds because they couldn’t understand what the fuck they were there for? The South Vietnamese were cheating us and robbing us and laughing their balls off at us and having the greatest fucking time of their lives, that’s what they were doing! Same philosophy, Asian version. Número uno.”

  “I believed—believe—it was important.”

  “You wanna tell me the final score? Like, was it a win, or a loss, or a draw?”

  Peace with honor, thought O’Farrell, remembering his reflections on the way to Florida. Not reflections; very much the sort of cynicism that this bastard was offering, but from a different side of the fence. He had lost control of the interview; he didn’t know, at that moment, how to continue it. Hurriedly he said, “Ochoa supplies the drugs?”

  “Usually. The stuff I got caught with came from the Milona family, in Cartagena.”

  “And the guns come from Europe?”

  “That’s what Cuadrado told me,” Rodgers said. “And when we really got the thing under way, I several times saw crates brought from the port to Matanzas with Czech lettering.”

  No proof, O’Farrell thought, in an abrupt flare of hope. He’d heard a fairly convincing story of a drug-and-gunrunning enterprise, but so far there was nothing tying in the Cuban ambassador to Britain. And without that proof, he didn’t have to proceed; wouldn’t proceed. He said, “What was the system? Where did the drugs go? Who got paid the money after the drug sale?”

  “Europe,” Rodgers said at once. “America too. Everywhere.”

  “A city. Give me a city,” O’Farrell said.

  “London.” Rodgers said finally. “That’s what Cuadrado told me, that London controlled the European arms sellers who were reliable and who could get everything. He boasted their guy was in the government, too, just as he was. I tell you, Havana’s put a lot of thought into this.”

  “Does London handle the drugs as well?”

  Rodgers frowned doubtfully. “Never quite understood that,” he admitted. “I got the impression that wasn’t how it was done, but I don’t know.”

  “What about the guy in London?” O’Farrell pressed. “What about a name?”

  Rodgers shook his head. “No name, ever. Just that their man knew the business. Was highly respected.”

  “Like you did,” O’Farrell said carelessly.

  “Got unlucky, is all,” Rodgers said, equally careless.

  Shithead, O’Farrell thought. He said, “You ever think about what you were doing; worry about it?”

  “Why. the hell should I?” Rodgers came back. “I was making big bucks; free enterprise, the American way. You ever worry about what you do?”

  As soon as he’d posed it O’Farrell had regretted the question, but he regretted the response even more. Yes, he thought; increasingly. Every day and every night I worry about what I do. “Cuadrado ever say anything more specific about the arms suppliers? Any names?”

  The shoulders went up and down. “I told you already, they were using a lot of different suppliers. I never heard no names.”

  “There must have been some lead about London,” O’Farrell insisted. “Some lead to who it was.” If Rodgers could provide it, then this was his moment of commitment, O’Farrell acknowledged; his stomach felt loose.

  Opposite him Rodgers sat with his chin on his hands, leaning forward on the chair back. His brow was creased and O’Farrell wondered if he were trying for genuine recall or trying to invent something that might help him get the special treatment he was seeking. “Not really,” the man said emptily at last.

  “What does ‘not really’ mean!”

  “We were eating, time before last … we kinda got into the habit of going out together every time. Some guys are like that, they get a buzz out of hanging around sky jocks. I didn’t mind, what the hell—”

  “What happened!”

  “It was when Cuadrado was talking about electronic equipment,” Rodgers said. “Said it was going to be high-class stuff, the best. Fixed up by whoever was handling it in London. And then he says, ‘He’s a real hotshot but that don’t matter.’”

  “‘A real hotshot but that don’t matter,’” O’Farrell echoed. “What’s that mean?”

  “No idea,” Rodgers said. “Just thought it was a funny remark.”

  Would a Cuban in his country’s export ministry consider an overseas ambassador a hotshot? Maybe. And then he remembered Petty’s description during that theatrical briefing in the Ellipse. Glossy son of a bitch. Similar, but still not a positive enough connection, not positive enough for him to carry out the sentence with which he had been entrusted. He said, “That all?”

  “That’s all,” Rodgers said. “You satisfied?”

  “Not by a long way. We’re going to need to meet again.”

  “When?”

  “What’s your hurry?” O’Farrell said, intentionally bullying. “You got all the time in the world.”

  Before leaving the building, O’Farrell requested material he wanted from Washington and received the immediate assurance that it would be provided the following day. He ate, early and without interest, in the motel coffee shop, and afterwards went directly to his room. By coincidence a segment of “Sixty Minutes” was devoted to Nicaragua, with a lot of footage of American troop exercises in neighboring Honduras. Cut into the report was film of protests throughout America against the United States’s involvement. O’Farrell was curious: How many Americans were already in-country, “advisers” or “aid officials,” working with the Contras? There’d be quite a lot, he knew, despite congressional objections and protest marchers with banners.

  After “Sixty Minutes” O’Farrell turned off the television, wishing he’d bought a book or a copy of the Miami Herald at least. He’d noticed a liquor store two blocks away on his return from the interview and determinedly driven past. It meant he hadn’t had even his customary martinis. It would be a five-minute walk, ten at the outside; not even necessary to cross the highway. Nothing wrong with a nightcap, hadn’t had anything all day. Well, just those on a plane on the flight down. Only three. Long time ago. Hardly counted. O’Farrell stretched out both arms before him, pleased at how little movement there was.

  Determinedly—as determinedly as he’d driven past the liquor store—O’Farrell undressed and put out the light and lay in the darkness, sleepless but proud of himself. He didn’t need booze; just proved to himself that he didn’t need booze.

  The file arrived the next day as promised. There was confirmation that a Rene Cuadrado held the post of junior minister in Cuba’s export ministry and a sparse biography putting his age around forty. He was believed to be married, with one child. He was said to live in Matanzas. There were three photographs. The file upon Fabio Ochoa was far more extensive and obtained mostly, O’Farrell guessed, from Drug Enforcement Administration sources. There were five photographs of the Colombian. O’Farrell chose the best picture of each man and intermingled them among fifteen other prints of unnamed, unconnected people shipped at his request in the overnight
package. In addition to what had been sent down from Washington, local authorities confirmed the three abandoned aircraft landings Rodgers had talked about. So he’d told the truth there; but then he’d had no reason to lie.

  Rodgers sat correctly on the chair this time, sifting through the photographs, laying out each print as he’d studied it as if he were dealing cards. He made a first-time, unequivocal identification of both Cuadrado and Ochoa.

  “You sure?” O’Farrell persisted, nevertheless. That was what he had to be, sure; one-hundred-percent sure.

  “You think I don’t know these guys!” He extended his hand, forefinger against that next to it. “We were that close!”

  There was something he’d forgotten, O’Farrell realized. He said, “Just you? Or were there others?”

  The question appeared to disconcert the other man. “There were others,” he conceded dismissively. “But I was the one.” The fingers came out again. “We were that close, believe me!”

  So Rodgers’s seizure hadn’t stopped the traffic. Stuff that makes you feel funny. O’Farrell collected the photographs and said, “All right.”

  “What now?” Rodgers smiled, knowing he’d done well.

  “You wait some more,” O’Farrell said, slotting the prints into the delivery envelope.

  “Hey man!” protested the smuggler. “I’ve cooperated, like you asked! How about a little feedback here! How long I gotta wait!”

  Man. O’Farrell felt himself growing physically hot. “As long as it takes,” he said. Maybe longer, he thought.

  Both encounters were recorded, on film as well as tape, and Petty and Erickson considered them, comparing them with the earlier transcripts of Customs and FBI interviews.

  “I think he was too aggressive,” Erickson said. From his spot by the window he could see the protestors against something, but could not hear their chants to discover what it was.

  “I don’t know.” Petty pointed to the film. “Look at Rodgers; pimp-rolling son of a bitch. He needed to be knocked off balance, and O’Farrell certainly did just that. And by doing so he got more than anyone else.”