He approached Rivera’s Hampstead home from a mile to the north and drove by without slowing or paying any obvious attention, reserving the more detailed surveillance until later and merely noting as he passed that the house front was near the road, shielded only by a moderately high wall and ornate double gates. He clocked at twenty-five minutes the distance to the High Holborn embassy, but knew there would be differences depending upon times and traffic congestion. He did not pause at High Holborn, either. It took longer, another fifteen minutes, to reach the Pimlico home of the Cuban’s mistress, and again he drove by. But in Chelsea O’Farrell stopped, deciding it was necessary to record the timings. He found a pub on the Embankment, overlooking the Thames, and carried the gin and tonic outside; it was warm and pleasant to sit on the bench, although he could not actually see the water because of the river wall. Both sides of the road were marked with double yellow lines, which meant parking was illegal; a car did stop with one man who remained at the wheel, and O’Farrell watched it without apparently doing so until a girl emerged from a house farther up the road, was enthusiastically kissed, and then driven away in the direction of the city. There were five metered parking bays, all occupied but every vehicle empty. The only other occupant of the river-bordering benches was a tramp absorbed by the unseen contents of a Safeways carrier bag. He was on his own, O’Farrell decided.
He’d seen the double measure put into his glass from the approved jigger used in English pubs, but it seemed weak, and then O’Farrell reflected that they often did these days in American bars, too. The only way to get a decent drink seemed to be to make it himself. Not that he intended taking a bottle to Courtfield Road or any other of the boardinghouses. No booze yesterday, he remembered proudly. He wouldn’t have more than one or two drinks today.
He entered the times into his pocketbook but without any designation of what they represented so they would be meaningless to anyone but himself. He had a second drink—considering and then rejecting the idea of eating—and then a third because it was still comparatively early and it was pleasant, sitting in the sun. So he had a fourth. It was then that he was sure he spotted the watchers monitoring him—two men in a Ford that had gone three times along the same stretch of the Embankment. Fuck them, he thought belligerently.
It took O’Farrell an hour and fifteen minutes to reach the Windsor ground where Rivera customarily played polo, which was out of season just now, and even longer to get back into London, because by then the evening rush hour was at its height. He decided to utilize it, going to the embassy again and then stopwatching himself back up to Hampstead and the ambassador’s residence on Christ-church Hill. The journey took an extra ten minutes.
It was more difficult than the previous night for O’Farrell to find an unlicensed restaurant, but he did, and decided the search had been worthwhile because the food was better. He’d parked the car away from Courtfield Road, of course. He didn’t want the boardinghouse owner, whose shirt that morning had been the same as the previous day, to make any connection between himself and the vehicle. Walking back from the restaurant, O’Farrell passed two hotels and three pubs and studiously ignored every one. Made it, he thought, in his room; knew I could make it.
Connors and Wentworth, who’d drawn the dogwatch again, slumped in their observation car outside. Connors had located his cassette case and was happier than the previous night, the Walkman loose against his head.
“You like Mahler?” he asked the other man.
“Gotta tin ear,” Wentworth said. “What do you think of today?” They’d picked up a full report from the day team.
“Careful guy,” Connors said. “Covering all the angles.”
Two hundred yards away, sleepless in his darkened room, O’Farrell forced himself to confront the awareness he had been avoiding throughout the day. It hadn’t been necessary to cover the routes as thoroughly as he had, filling up the entire day, certainly not to drive all the way out to Windsor and back again.
He was putting it off, O’Farrell knew, putting off what he had to do.
FIFTEEN
THEY WERE together so rarely as a family that the evening had an odd formality, a gathering of polite strangers intent upon doing nothing to offend the others. Rivera was smilingly solicitous to Estelle, who smiled a lot in response. And Jorge, whose twelfth birthday it was, gave each parent his open-eyed, respectful attention, alert to intervene at the first sign of discord between them, as he had learned to divert arguments before, when enough feeling had remained between them to stimulate arguments. It wasn’t there any longer, but the child didn’t know that.
Rivera had given some thought to planning the treat, going as far as discussing it in advance with Estelle, who agreed that an entire evening would be difficult for the two of them and thought the revival of South Pacific would be ideal. Before setting off from Hampstead for the theater, Jorge was given his presents while Rivera and Estelle made a conscious effort and sipped champagne. It was not the first effort either had made. An element of competition remained between them, and each had tried to outdo the other with the choice of present. Estelle had gone for the traditional, an elaborate designer bicycle heavy with every available extra—which certainly gave her the contest in actual appearance. Rivera explained to Jorge as he handed over the document that it was a contract for success-guaranteed hang-gliding lessons, and that the hang glider was too bulky to get into the drawing room but was waiting in the garage. The experienced child reacted with precisely the same level of enthusiasm to both, but Rivera considered himself the winner.
They had box seats at the musical, which turned out to be an excellent choice for Jorge. The boy sat enraptured, applauding loudly. Rivera found his seat uncomfortable in his boredom and guessed Estelle did, too. Occasionally he glanced across al her but she studiously ignored the attention, instead gazing fixedly at the stage as if she were as enthralled as their son.
Whose fault had it been that their marriage had turned out the disaster it was? Hers, he decided instantly. There’d never been love but he’d been prepared to make some attempt, establish a relationship in which they could both exist comfortably. But Estelle, who was eighteen years younger, had turned shrew almost from the moment the ceremony was over, practically gloating over her success in snaring a grateful middle-aged diplomat whose vocation would get her away from Cuba and into social strata where she felt she belonged; like Rivera’s family, Estelle’s had suffered by Castro’s accession to power, but it had been slower to recover. Rivera brought his attention closer, to the boy. Part of that ensnarement, Rivera was sure, conceived the moment Estelle discerned his disinterest and feared he might end the marriage. Certainly he’d never believed she’d wanted to become pregnant; it was maneuvered, like the marriage itself. And it had been an absurd nine months, Estelle demanding nearly daily attention from the gynecologist and exercising constantly to maintain her figure. After the birth she’d been more concerned with regaining her waist than she seemed to be with Jorge, whom she immediately handed over to a nurse. No matter, thought Rivera philosophically; they were both making the best of it.
He wondered sometimes about Estelle’s men: whether she slept with one particular lover or many. He pitied them, compared to the experience of sleeping with Henrietta. With whom he would have rather been now—even out of bed—than enduring a blaring musical on a seat built for dwarfs with a woman he didn’t like anymore and who disliked him just as much in return. He felt far differently about Henrietta than he ever had about Estelle. Actually missed her; thought about her constantly.