NINE
PETTY 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. He was doing good, he assured himself. Hands as steady as a rock now, the lump in his stomach not so discomforting anymore.
“All the sights are very close to here,” offered the barman. “Smithsonian, Space Museum, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial …”
And the Museum of American History, thought O’Farrell. It was his favorite, a place of which he never tired; he’d hoped, a long time ago, that he might find some reference to his ancestor in Kansas but the archivist hadn’t found anything; perhaps he should try again. He said, “Thanks for the advice.”
“You feel like another?” The barman indicated O’Farrell’s empty glass.
Yes, he thought, at once. “Time to go,” he said.
“See you again, maybe?”
“Maybe,” said O’Farrell. He wouldn’t be able to use the place anymore, in case the man remembered.
The bar had been darker than he realized, and once outside he squinted against the sudden brightness, wishing he’d brought his dark glasses from the car. He hesitated, looking back toward the parking garage and then in the direction of the Ellipse, deciding there was insufficient time now, nearly five-to as it was. O’Farrell was lucky with the lights on Pennsylvania and again on the cross street but still had to hurry to get to the grassed area before the hour struck, which he wanted to do. Petty was a funny bastard and absolute punctuality was one of his fetishes.
He heard the chime from some unseen clock at the same time as he saw both of them on one of the benches opposite the Commerce Building, and thought, Damn! He wasn’t late—right on time—but it would have been better if he’d been waiting for them rather than the other way around.
They saw O’Farrell at the same time and rose to meet him, walking not straight toward him but off at a tangent into the path, so that he had to change direction slightly to fall into step.
“Sorry to have kept you,” he said at once.
“You weren’t late,” the section head assured him. “We were early.” Petty was using a pipe with a bowl that seemed out of proportion to its stem; the tobacco was sweet smelling, practically perfumed.
“It was a pleasant day to sit in the sun,” Erickson said.
O’Farrell still had his eyes screwed against the brightness and hoped he didn’t get a headache. He experienced a flicker of irritation. The three of them knew why they were there, so why pussyfoot around talking about the weather! He said. “What is it?”
“Difficult one,” Petty said. “Bad.”
Weren’t they all, O’Farrell thought. He scarcely felt any apprehension; no shake, no uncertainty. “What?”
“Drugs and guns, two-way traffic,” came in Erickson. “Cuba working to destabilize God knows what in Latin America.”
“Drugs!” O’Farrell said at once.
“Massive shipments,” said Petty. “That’s how Havana is raising the money.”
O’Farrell had the mental image of little Billy playing space games in the Chicago cafe. And then remembered something else. I think they ought to kill the bastards! Make it a capital offense and execute them; no appeal, no excuse, nothing. Dead! Jill’s outburst that day in Ellen’s kitchen: the dear, sweet, gentle Jill he didn’t believe capable of killing anything, not even a bug. He said, “There can’t be a federal agency in this city not connected in some way with drug interdiction.” It was not an obvious attempt at avoidance. The rules were very clear, very specific: he—and these two men walking either side of him—only became involved when every legal possibility had been considered and positively discarded.