And now he was ready. Tonight. After tonight it would all be over. Finished. Thank God.
Incredibly, after all the inner turmoil, he felt no apprehension and he was actually surprised. He felt the heightened awareness there always was when the moment came close, the adrenaline surge he positively welcomed because it made him more alert, but none of the gut-churning emotions of the previous weeks, which had, he accepted, brought him close to collapse. And he seemed to have succeeded in putting aside in his mind and consciousness the wife and the child as well, so they were no longer a factor in his reasoning.
Now, he thought again. Tonight. Still no apprehension. The uncertainty, the self-doubt, had to have been a passing phase then, brought on by God knows what. O’Farrell was glad it had passed. He hoped it didn’t come again.
O’Farrell set out late, past midnight, allowing time for Rivera to be home and for the BMW engine to be cold. He drove more cautiously than usual, acknowledging this to be possibly the most dangerous part of what he intended to do; he was driving a doubtfully roadworthy rented car containing Czechoslovakian-made explosives and Soviet detonators. And other materials that could, without too great a stretch of a policeman’s imagination, be described as housebreaking equipment. Unquestionably the most dangerous part. He waited, expectantly, but there was nothing like the uncertainty he’d known recently. It was virtually always like this at the last moment, he reassured himself, just the same: always, in these last few hours, holding a gun or working with explosives that could take a human life. There was a flicker of unease when the phrase “human life” went through his mind but it was very slight and didn’t last.
O’Farrell drove bv the house on Christchurch Hill the BMW was there—but didn’t slow. He continued on to a turn, turning again and then again, completing the square, parking farther away than he had before. He wanted the concealing protection of the other cars that lined the road there, where his vehicle would be one of many, not isolated for a registration check by a cautious policeman. The lights extinguished. O’Farrell remained behind the wheel, checking the time against the unseen but scheduled passing of the police patrol. At the precise moment he knew they would be going by Rivera’s home, he left the car, a smooth, quick movement. Whatever he carried in this area at this time of night would have aroused curiosity, but O’Farreii thought the briefcase was the most acceptable. It bulged heavily, but so did a lot of briefcases; he wished he had been able to age it more successfully. He was glad of the darkness.
O’Farrell walked alert to everything around him, not consciously using the shadows—which in itself would be suspicious—but ready to withdraw into them if necessary. He did, after about fifty yards, when outside lights abruptly blazed ahead of him and there was a noisy, shouted parting between guests and hosts. But when a car suddenly came around the comer, filling the road with its headlights, he did not withdraw. He realized he would have already been seen and that to do so would clearly be suspicious. The vehicle was unmarked and there was no obvious interest from anyone inside. He pulled into the cover of an overhanging tree after it had passed, to watch for the glare of suddenly applied brake lights, but none came. At the comer of the road upon which Rivera’s house was built, O’Farrell paused, checking the police progress. Twenty-five minutes before their next patrol, allowing five minutes for any unforeseen change in their pattern. And he had about one hundred yards and a gate to negotiate. Time to spare, he calculated, walking on. O’Farrell saw car lights far ahead. He would easily have been able to dodge, but trees did not overhang in such profusion as before and there was less shadow. He decided it was better to walk on, as if he had every right to be where he was. There seemed to be a perceptible slowing but the car didn’t stop; he didn’t immediately look back, as he’d done before, worried of their watching him in their rearview mirror. He waited until he was two houses from Rivera’s official residence. There was no sign of any vehicle. People either. Ahead, the road was deserted. He checked the time again. Still ten minutes.
He consciously slowed when he reached the edge of Rivera’s property, ears strained for any movement or sound—guards, dogs, whatever he had missed in his surveillance. There was a dog barking but it was far away; nearer, and louder, water was running. A fountain, O’Farrell guessed; it might have been in Rivera’s garden but could have been in that of a neighbor. He stopped just short of the gate so as not to be silhouetted by it, but able to reach out to test if it were locked after all. As he did so, far up the road, he saw the black, moving outlines of two pedestrians—it had to be the returning policemen. He did not hurry. As close to the wall as he was, he would merge completely with it. The latch lifted with barely an audible click and there was no sound at all as the gate gave inward, on oiled hinges. O’Farrell opened it only enough to ease through, closing it just as soundlessly before moving sideways to the protection of the shrubbery, and off the crunching gravel. He dropped, perfectly comfortable, into a squatting crouch, waiting for the police to pass, ears again tensed to hear a voice or a footstep. Unaccountably he was swept by a feeling of déjà vu and searched for the memory. It came very quickly. How he’d learned to crouch, for hours if necessary, and how he’d listened on deep reconnaissance missions behind the lines in Vietnam, he recalled: in Vietnam, where for the first time he—O’Farrell closed his mind to the recollection.
The sound came indistinctly at first, meaning the officers were a long way off, and O’Farrell was pleased; if he’d been unaware of their approach, the warning would have been more than early enough to evade or avoid. Overhead an airliner growled toward London airport and O’Farrell was able to see the triangle of its landing lights. Less than twenty-four hours, he thought, this time tomorrow, in fact, he would be home in Alexandria, with the newly preserved archive to go back to and the cars to clean on Saturdays and only die problems—the seemingly easier, ordinary problems—of Jill and Ellen and John to worry about. Normality, blessed normality.
“… know she’s screwing around,” came a voice, at last.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I’ve got nothing to confront her with,” came a policeman’s reply.
“So you’re going to wait until she gets pregnant or catches the clap?”
“‘Course not,” said the voice, fading.
“What then?”
The reply was too indistinct to hear. Forty-five minutes, O’Farrell calculated. The BMW was not directly in front of the house, as it usually was, but to the side near the garage. It was a doubtful advantage. The vehicle was out of the direct line from the road, making it easier to work on undetected either from the house or by any passerby, but increasing the distance, he had to move across the noisy gravel. O’Farrell used the grassed garden border until there was no more and hesitated with each seemingly echoed step toward the car. Around him everything slumbered, undisturbed.