[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Didn’t need it.Couldn’t give in.Wouldn’t give in.“Sweet Jesus!” exclaimed McCarthy.“Holy sweet Jesus!” He was given to blasphemous outbursts when he was excited and he was excited now.“Quite a picture,” Sneider agreed, seeking a lead from the other man.“We can close down Belac,” the CIA department head said.“Lure the bastard here, have the FBI arrest him, and then hit him with so many indictments he won’t know which way is which.”“What about the ambassador, Rivera?”“Which is what he is, an ambassador,” said McCarthy, with logic that would have been absurdly obscure to any other man.“He’s not committing a crime within the jurisdiction of any American court.And he can always cop a plea of diplomatic immunity if we save it up for later.”McCarthy nodded in agreement.“He’s got to be stopped, though.”“No doubt about it.” Sneider knew the way now.McCarthy used the private telephone on his desk, one that was security-cleared but did not go through the CIA switchboard.“George!” he greeted when Petty answered.“How are things?”“Good,” said Petty, from his office near Lafayette Park.“Busy?”“Not particularly.”“Thought we might meet?”“You choose.”“How about tomorrow?”“Tomorrow’s good.”“Twelve-thirty?”“Fine.”The summons to Charles O’Farrell came twenty-four hours after that.NINEPETTY DECREED a meeting in the open air, which he sometimes did, and which O’Farrell regarded as overly theatrical, like those movies about the CIA where people met each other without one acknowledging or looking directly at the other.The section head chose the Ellipse, at noon, but O’Farrell intentionally arrived early.He put his car in the garage on E Street, which meant he had to walk back past the National Theater and the Willard, where he and Jill had endured the embarrassment of that face-slapping row.Momentarily he considered the Round Robin again but almost at once dismissed it.Instead he cut around the block to the Washington Hotel, choosing the darkened ground-floor bar, not the open rooftop veranda overlooking the Treasury Building and the White House beyond.It was more discreet, anonymous; he certainly didn’t want to encounter Petty and Erickson taking an early cocktail themselves.He didn’t know if either of them drank; didn’t know anything at all about them.Just that they were the two from whom he took his orders.In the first year there had been three.Chris Wilmot had been an asthmatic jogger who’d died on a morning run down Capitol Hill.O’Farrell never knew why the man hadn’t been replaced.He ordered a double gin and tonic, but poured in only half the tonic, briefly staring into the glass.Okay, so now he was drinking during the day.Not the day; the morning.Needed it, that’s all.Just one, to get his hands steady.He studied them as he reached forward for the glass; hardly a movement.He was fine.Just this one then.Wouldn’t become a habit.How could it? Other times he had an office to go to and accounts to balance.Nothing at all wrong in taking an occasional drink this early; quite pleasant in fact.Relaxing.That’s what he had to do, relax.Get rid of the sensation balled up in his gut, like he’d eaten too much heavy food he couldn’t shift, the feeling that had been there since the telephone call.More movie theatrics.“There’s a need for us to meet.” No hello, no identification, no good-bye, no kiss-my-ass.O’Farrell openly sniggered at the nonsense of it.The barman was at the far end, near the kitchen door, reading the sports section of the Washington Post, and didn’t hear.O’Farrell took a long pull at his drink.Tasted good; still only 11:20.Plenty of time to cross over to the park.To what? He made himself think.There was only one answer.Who would it be? And why? And how difficult? The method was always the most difficult; that’s what made him so good, the time and trouble he always took over the method.Never any embarrassment, never any comeback.It would be the sixth, he calculated, the same number now as his great-grandfather.Who’d retired after that.No, not quite.The man had stayed in office for another five or six years at least.But he’d never been forced into another confrontation.Six, O’Farrell thought again.All justified, every one of them.Crimes against the country, against the people; his country, his people.Verdicts had not been returned by a recognized court, that’s all; no question of what those verdicts would have been, if there had been an arraignment.Guilty every time.Unanimous; guilty as charged, on all counts.Eleven-thirty, he saw.Still plenty of time.Some tonic left.He made a noise and the barman looked up, nodding to O’Farrell’s gesture.The barman set the fresh glass in front of him and said.“Time to kill, eh?”“Something like that.”“Visiting?”“Just looking around,” O’Farrell said, purposely vague.Never be positive, never look positive, in any casual encounter; always essential to be instantly forgotten at the moment of parting.“Great city, Washington.Lot to see.”A great capital for a great country, thought O’Farrell, the familiar reflection.“So I hear.”“Where you from?”“Nowhere special.”The barman appeared unoffended by the evasion.He said, “Austin myself.Been here five years, though.Wouldn’t go back.”“Never been to Texas,” O’Farrell lied, unwilling to get entangled in an exchange about landmarks or places they both might know.There was a benefit, from the conversation.It was meaningless, empty chitchat, but O’Farrell looked upon it as a test, mentally observing himself as he thought Petty and Erickson might observe him later
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]