“It varies,” O’Farrell said. It sounded like a cocktail-party greeting and Lambert actually seemed dressed for one in his subdued Ivy League suit, pin-collared shirt, and inconspicuous club tie. Lambert wouldn’t be his real name; probably adopted just for this encounter. The man’s nose wrinkled against the pervading tobacco smell.
“Want you to understand something,” Petty said. “John’s cleared for everything. He knows what you do and all about Rivera and the accident with his wife.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” O’Farrell said quietly. He knew now why the two men had met him at Dulles Airport. Lambert had to be personally introduced and guaranteed, by people he trusted, for the debriefing to progress at all. He guessed Lambert was a psychologist more highly cleared than Symmons, one of the get-your-head-right brigade. The man really did look young.
“We’ll get to that in time,” Lambert said dismissively. “Not now. You’ll be bushed after the flight.”
How much of the tiredness was genuine fatigue and how much was alcohol-induced? O’Farrell wondered. He said, “I’m okay.”
“Tomorrow’s soon enough,” Lambert said. “Let’s get settled in first.”
Petty and Erickson, their function fulfilled, looked at each other, and Petty said, “We’ll be getting back. We’ve got a drive.”
“A few days,” O’Farrell said, sufficiently sober now to be unsettled by what was happening. It never had before, after any previous mission. But then, he reminded himself, no previous mission had ended like this one.
“That’s what we’re talking about,” Petty said.
Why was the talk like this: the casual chitchat of a cocktail party! Why weren’t they talking about a blown-apart woman named Estelle Rivera who had a well-mannered, cute little kid who’d missed being blown apart with her only by a fluke, because a car had been parked in an inconvenient place and it was raining?
“I killed someone!” O’Farrell yelled, so unexpectedly loud that Erickson, by the door, jumped. “I murdered an innocent person!”
“Easy now, easy,” Lambert soothed. “Not tonight. Later.”
“Why’s everyone avoiding it, as if it never happened! Why later?”
“No one’s avoiding it,” Lambert said, still soothing. “We’ll talk it all through, you and me, tomorrow.”
Another twenty-four hours—twelve at least—for them to discover if he’d left any trace? A possibility, O’Farrell knew. What would they do to him if he had, if there were the likelihood of the whole mess becoming a public disaster? He shifted, unsettled; the business of these men was killing potential embarrassment, wasn’t it? Wrong, perhaps, to erupt as he had. Could he back down without appearing to do so? He said, “What will the result be, after we’ve talked it all through?” and wished he’d thought of something better, something stronger.
“We won’t know that until we’ve talked, will we?” said Lambert, making a perceptible gesture for the other two men to leave. “Let’s go see where you’re going to bunk down.”
Despite the suggestion, it wasn’t a bunk. It was a bed in a single room a little farther along the same corridor. There were built-in closets and a private bathroom, a remote-controlled television, and Newsweek and Time on a table separating two easy chairs. Like every motel room in which he’d ever stayed, O’Farrell thought. He was glad to see the bathroom.
“Anything you want—food, booze, anything—just pick up the phone and tell the operator,” Lambert said.
There were two phones, one beside the bed, the second on the magazine table. O’Farrell saw that neither had a dialing mechanism. He wasn’t sure, but he thought the man had just slightly stressed the word “booze” when he’d made the offer. Testing, O’Farrell said, “It was a long flight. I wouldn’t mind walking around a little.”
Lambert grimaced, a man imparting rules he hasn’t made and doesn’t approve. “There’s not been time to get you any authorization documents,” he said. “You know what the security’s like here: the mice carry ID!”
The man who looked too young to be here at all was trying his best, O’Farrell conceded. He said, “No walks?”
“Afraid not.”
O’Farrell indicated the telephones. “What about outside calls? I need to speak to my wife.”
“Not just yet,” Lambert said apologetically. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Or the day after,” O’Farrell said.
“Maybe,” Lambert agreed.
“You going to lock the door?”
“No.”
“There’s a guard at the back as well as at the front of the building?”
“Yes,” Lambert confirmed.
“Where I would be stopped, forcibly if necessary, if I tried to go by.”
“It’s the way they’re trained in a place like this.”
“So I’m under arrest? Imprisoned?” O’Farrell demanded.
“I wouldn’t have described it as that.”
“Describe it to me your way,” O’Farrell insisted.
“Protected,” Lambert said. “Extremely well protected. I would have thought you’d be grateful.”
The men rode for a long time without speaking to each other. Petty contacted an emergency number from the car phone and had himself patched through to McCarthy for a brief, monosyllabic conversation. When he replaced the instrument, Petty said, “Our antiterrorist unit at the embassy has been allowed access by the British. More theories than you can shake a stick at. Current favorite is that it’s political, Latin American-based. Forensics has identified the explosive as Semtex and the metal left from the detonator as of Soviet manufacture.”
“Looks good, then?” Erickson, was pleased to get in first with a question rather than having to provide an answer.
“Exactly as it was planned, apart from the victim,” Petty confirmed. Before Erickson could speak again, he said, “So what about O’Farrell?”
“I think we need to get the result of the debriefing to be sure,” Erickson said. “He looked as flaky as hell when he came off that airplane. And there was the booze. There was quite a bit of it in London, too.”
“He seemed to sober up quickly enough,” Petty said. “But there’s a lot of guilt there. He’s supposed to be trained to control guilt.”
“Retire him?”
“McCarthy wants to talk to me about it.”
“What’s there to talk about?”
Petty shrugged. “Who can tell? You know what a devious bastard McCarthy is. He’s had quite a conversation with Lambert, apparently.”
“This time we seem to have gotten away with it,” Erickson said. “I think to risk using O’Farrell again would be madness.”
Petty gave another shrug. “Who knows?” he said again.
“In the immediate future we don’t have to get within a million miles of José Gaviria Rivera.”
Back in Fort Pearce, O’Farrell actually considered kneeling by the bedside, like a kid, but shook his head against the idea, looking around the empty room in positive embarrassment. He tried to pray, lying in bed in the darkness, but shrugged that attempt off, too. There could be no forgiveness, no absolution, for what he’d done. Had there ever been?
TWENTY-THREE
IT WAS an odd room. Because of the construction of the building, it should have had an outside window, but it didn’t. Neither did it really look like a proper office. There was a desk and a telephone, but books were haphazardly stacked all over it, and more books spilled over from the bookcase beyond. The television was on, showing a game in which men and women who were supposed not to know each other were romantically paired, and Lambert was propped on the edge of the desk, watching it. At O’Farrell’s entry, he turned like a man surprised and then waved him in.