It was a sprawling complex they could enter separately without any suggestion of a meeting, and inside the security was absolute, so McCarthy and Sneider traveled to Fort Pearce separately from Petty and Erickson for the meeting with Lambert.
There was a game show on the television when the group entered Lambert’s office, and for several moments the psychologist kept it running, gesturing toward it.
“Do you know that in half an hour of a show like this, you can see most of the theories of Freud with a few of Jung’s, for good measure?” he asked.
“If you say so,” McCarthy said, unimpressed.
Lambert took the hint and switched the set off. “Coffee or booze?” he invited.
“Booze.” McCarthy’s coffee drinking ended promptly with the beginning of happy hour. “You got Wild Turkey?”
“Yes,” Lambert said; he stocked it for this meeting, knowing McCarthy’s preference.
“Two fingers, with a little branch water. No ice,” McCarthy stipulated.
“The same,” Sneider said.
Petty declined a drink. The ulcer was giving him hell and the medication wasn’t helping a damn. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Do you mind if I fart?” Lambert asked.
Petty already had his hand lifted hopefully toward his top pocket. He stopped, frowning. “What’s that mean?”
“Means I find pipe smoking offensive in public, like farting.” Lambert said.
McCarthy chuckled, accepting his drink. “We’re all of us going to wear you down in the end, George. Why don’t you just surrender?”
Petty dropped heavily into a chair, leaving his pipe where it was. He said, “O’Farrell gone?”
“About two hours ago,” the psychologist said.
“Tell me in simple words, no inside-the-head crap,” McCarthy said.
“There was a great deal of guilt about wrongly killing the woman; I got rid of a lot of it,” said Lambert. “At the end he was calling it an accident as a matter of course. But that really just provided a focus for the real problem. He’s started to question the morality: what right have we to decide upon life or death? I think I got him back more or less on course there. He’s proud of his army service, the medals and the recognition for being a gung-ho, behind-the-lines bastard. Which is another problem: he doesn’t have the security blanket of knowing there’s someone or something behind him if he fouls up. That was his real emotion coming back on the plane. Plenty of guilt, sure. But terror for himself, too. The ancestral archive is him grabbing out for some sort of justification, wanting to imagine himself the lawman.”
“What about the mother and the father and the Russian thing?” Sneider asked.
Lambert shook his head, going to his coffee machine. “No particular trauma there. He regrets not visiting them more when they got older, thinks he might have seen some change in his mother in time to get her treatment and prevent it happening, but it’s not a big problem for him.”
“It did happen though, didn’t it?” McCarthy pressed.
“What?” Lambert frowned.
McCarthy gave a dismissive head movement. “Talking to myself,” he said. “He mention Makarevich at all?”
“Never,” Lambert said at once.
“So what’s the bottom line?” Petty asked. “Can he work again or not?”
“Depends how you wrap the package,” Lambert said. “O’Farrell’s got a lot of pride, about his house and his family and looking after everyone; about doing everything right. Proud of not being a quitter; that was a phrase that came out several times, as we talked. And then there’s the flag and the country and patriotism. I’m pretty sure it’s genuine, but of course it makes it easy for him to think of himself as the soldier he once was.”
“So how the hell do you wrap that up in a package that doesn’t leak!” Sneider demanded.
“I don’t know,” Lambert admitted. “Everything would depend on the assignment. He’d have to believe it absolutely—more absolutely than the checks and balances he’s previously been allowed—even to consider it.”
“Let’s skin the cat another way,” Erickson said. “Let’s say we did all that, proved that the devil had made it back in human form. What are the chances of O’Farrell’s nerve going or his motivation failing and everything going splat, right in our faces?”
“Always a possibility,” Lambert said unhelpfully. “Always has been, always will be, unless you employ psychos. O’Farrell said something like that himself.”
“I’m not getting a lot of guidance here,” Petty protested. “None of us are.”
“I’m giving you my opinion,” Lambert said. “Not what I think you want to hear. Aren’t we trying to prevent everything going splat, right in our faces?”
McCarthy grimaced. “Didn’t you ask him outright if he wanted to quit?”
“A few times,” Lambert said. “I never got a full answer, on any occasion. First he’d say yes, then he’d say no.”
“What did that signify?”
“‘I’m not a quitter,’” Lambert quoted.
“I don’t think it’s sufficient, any of it,” Erickson said. “So far we’ve lost nothing. We’ve been lucky. Let’s cut loose while we’re still ahead.”
“That’s my feeling, too,” Petty said.
McCarthy held out his glass to be replenished, and when Lambert returned with it, the Plans director said to the psychologist, “What decision would you make in our position?”
Lambert stared down at the man for several moments. “It’s possible.” the psychologist said. “Possible but dangerous. On balance, you’re going to need a hell of a lot of luck.”
“It’s always dangerous,” Sneider said.
“I’ve got an idea,” McCarthy said. “A hell of an idea.”
“We cut adrift from O’Farrell?” Sneider anticipated, for once wrongly.
The Plans Director frowned at his deputy. “Christ, no!” he said. “Whatever made you think that?”
TWENTY-FIVE
JILL WASN’T there when he got back to Alexandria. Three or four days earlier, before the sessions with Lambert, it would have thrown him for a loop, because he’d telephoned from Fort Pearce hours ahead, telling her of his supposed return on the afternoon British Airways flight. As it was, he contained the reaction to mild surprise. Jill was conscientious and often worked late at the clinic; hours sometimes, although he didn’t think she would tonight because she knew he was getting back.
He made a drink and wandered about the house, feeling its familiarity wrap comfortingly around him. He felt safe, secure. The impression reminded him of what Lambert had said, at one of their sessions; the first, he thought, although he wasn’t sure. The man had been right. Climbing under the bedcovers was just what he’d wanted to do; hide for a long time in the darkness, where no one could find him. Know he was there, even. He’d needed Lambert, needed the man more than he could calculate at this moment. Not that he could forget what had happened in London. It had been appalling and would always be with him. But Lambert had put it into perspective for him; he didn’t have any problem with the word “accident” anymore. Because that was what it had been: an appalling, ugly accident. But accidents happened. How had Lambert put it? The very fact that this was the first, ever, showed how careful he was, how professional. Something like that.
It had been an incredible relief to be able to talk as he’d talked to Lambert. He knew the feeling was ridiculous, after so short a time, but he found it easy to think of Lambert as a friend, the way the man had asked him to. Think of me as a friend, someone you can call and talk about anything, anytime. O’Farrell wasn’t sure that he would. It was all right this time, because of the circumstances. He’d needed the man. But to want to talk through things again might make Lambert think he was sonic soft of goofball, one of those goofballs who kept regular weekly appointments with a shrink and couldn’t function without them. Then again, he might. It wasn’t something he had to decide right now.