O'Farrell's Law (19 page)

“A confirmed and acknowledged order for a VAX 11/78, from Epetric, Inc. of Stockholm,” Hoover said, even more unnecessarily. “That is your signature, isn't it, Mr. Shepherd?”

“Epetric is a bona fide company, incorporated in Sweden,” Shepherd said, with pedantic formality. “There is no legal restriction against my doing business with such a company: Sweden, incidentally, is not one of the countries that are signatory to the agreement observed by the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls. My contract is with Epetric, not with anyone named Pierre Belac.”

A silence developed in the room as chilling as the air-conditioning, and Shepherd wondered if they expected him to say more. He couldn't, because there was nothing more to say. How deeply had they already investigated him? He'd tried to calculate how many deals he'd taken to the very edge, and perhaps sometimes over it. Enough, he knew. More than enough to be struck off the Pentagon list. But at the moment he was still ahead. Which is where he had to stay.

“We know that Pierre Belac placed that Epetric order through a shell company in Switzerland,” Hoover said.

“Your advantage, not mine,” Shepherd said. “My dealings thus far are absolutely and completely legitimate. This evidence? You could make it available to me?”

“You want proof?”

The resolution would be very simple, Shepherd realized, the relief flooding through him. He said. “My lawyers will, because inevitably there will be a breach-of-contract suit.”

Hoover frowned. “I'm afraid I don't quite follow here.”

Shepherd said, “I don't really see that we have a problem. No problem at all. The Epetric order is less than a third filled. I'll throw it back at them tomorrow, and that will be the end of it.”

“The kids are in the pool,” Morrison said. “Is it heated?”

Shepherd glanced through the window, then hack at the Bureau agent, frowning. “Of course it's heated.”

“Great house,” Morrison said, echoing his initial admiration.

“What the hell's going on!” Shepherd demanded. Easy! he warned himself. Take it easv!

“We've taken legal advice on what we've got,” Hoover said. “If we presented the evidence before a grand jury, we'd get an indictment against you and your company for conspiring to evade the requirements of the Export Administration Act, as amended.”

“Wait a minute!” said Shepherd. “Now just wait a goddamned minute! That's bullshit and you know it. You'd never get a conviction in any court, not in a million years. And I'd fight you every inch of the way.”

“But that's not how it works, is it, Mr. Shepherd?” said Morrison, with that infuriating mildness. “A grand jury isn't a court. It's an examination of evidence to see if there's a case to answer, leading to an indictment. Which, as I say, our legal people feel confident we'd get. Only then do we actually get to court. Where, probably, you'd be acquitted.”

Shepherd felt numb from trying to comprehend the riddles this bastard was weaving. “I don't understand,” he confessed desperately.

“You'd have been named in the indictment,” Hoover pointed out. “There'd be a loss of confidence, among suppliers, customers … customers like the Pentagon …” The man smiled invitingly. “Can't take any chances with our national security, can we?”

“Guilt by association, even if I'm ultimately found innocent of every accusation and charge.” Shepherd grasped the argument at last. A steady guaranteed flow of Pentagon orders bringing in a steady, guaranteed flow of profits, he thought, profits that provided Maria and bought the Rolls and the Mercedes and the Porsche and the pool with its Jacuzzi—the pool in which he could see Janie and the kids playing, right now—and an uninterrupted view of Monterey Bay.

“Ever hear the expression ‘shit sticks,' Mr. Shepherd?” asked Morrison.

“Yes,” Shepherd said. “I've heard it.”

“Fact of life. Unfair fact of life.”

“I think you'd better tell me what you want,” Shepherd said. Were they trying to shake him down? He'd have to be careful. Maybe it was an entrapment. He'd demand time to consider or to raise the money and talk it through with his lawyer. What if it wasn't an entrapment, just a simple case of bribery? Of course he'd pay. Whatever they wanted would be cheap, to avoid losing everything he had. It was easy to see now why there had been all that crap about the house and the pool. No point in fucking around. He said, “So okay, let's get down to the bottom line. How—”

“We want Belac,” Morrison said.

Shepherd had just—only just—pulled back from the lip of the precipice, but felt as if he might still be in danger of toppling over. “Want Belac?” he managed, with difficulty.

“Here, in the United States of America,” Hoover said. “Where we can arrest him and arraign him on grand-jury indictments we've already got. Belac's a wanted man.”

Shepherd strove to keep up, seeing the tightrope stretched in front of him. the tightrope he had to balance on, cooperating with these guys but keeping them very firmly away from anything they shouldn't see. “What do you want me to do?”

The two men exchanged glances. Morrison said, “Bring him to us.”

“How can I possibly do that!”

“Don't actually refuse to complete the VAX order—although you won't send anything more, of course,” Morrison said. “Tell Epetric you're not satisfied with the End-User Certificate or the bills of lading for ultimate destination. Whatever.”

“And they'll send their own man,” Shepherd argued. “Or deal with it by letter.”

“No, they won't.” Hoover smiled. “The Swedish authorities have had just the sort of conversation we're having here with all the directors of Epetric. They're willing to cooperate, just like you.”

They were assholes, both of them, thought Shepherd. He said, “This man, Belac, he'll never fall for it.”

“He's got an important customer to supply; we know it's a big order,” Morrison said. “We think it's worth a shot.”

Time for him to bargain. Shepherd decided. “So what if I get him here? What about all that”—he almost said crap but decided against it at the last minute—“talk of a grand jury?” He had to avoid that at any cost.

“We were just setting out all the possibilities,” Morrison said easily. “If we get Belac, then publicly you'll be the loyal American who did his duty, and everyone will admire you.”

Patronizing bastard, Shepherd thought. He said, “Fuck the public. What about the Defense Department?”

“Customs will make sure the Pentagon knows the contribution you made,” Hoover said.

“So will the Bureau,” Morrison said.

“Not enough,” Shepherd said. This was a two-way deal, despite all the macho talk. “What if Belac doesn't jump as you expect?”

Hoover shrugged. “So the shot didn't work.”

“But you can still move against me, to get Belac named on another indictment in his absence,” Shepherd said astutely. “So you've still got something and I've got nothing.” He thought he caught a nod of apparent admiration from Morrison but wasn't sure.

“What do you want, Mr. Shepherd?” Morrison asked.

“A legal document dated before my notification to Sweden. deposited with my lawyer, setting out what I am doing.”

“Very cautious.” Hoover smiled.

“Very necessary,” Shepherd said. He accepted a card with a San Francisco address that Morrison offered and put it in the pocket of his shorts. He said, “It wasn't necessary, you know. All those heavy-duty threats. I'd have cooperated from the beginning if you'd told me then what it was all about.”

“We just wanted to set out the options,” Morrison said. “Be sure ourselves.”

So they did suspect him. Shepherd said, “I'm glad you are now.”

“This time we're going to get Pierre Belac,” Hoover said, with quiet confidence.

The two men had reached Route 208, on their way back to San Francisco, before Hoover spoke. He said, “What do you think?”

“About Shepherd? He's dirty,” Morrison said. “Dirty and worried.”

“But about Belac?”

“Maybe not. I think the surprise was genuine there.”

“What do you think we should do?”

The other man was quiet for several moments. Then he said, “Let this run, see how it works out. We can pick up Shepherd anytime. He's not going anywhere from that awful house.”

O'Farrell used public transport, buses and the underground trains, to crisscross London. He needed small garage businesses with just a few rental cars—and those cars not current models—instead of the big agencies like Hertz or Avis or Budget with access to international computer links that could run checks at the touch of a few terminal keys. Not that the credit cards or driver's licenses he was using would have thrown up any problems: all the aliases were supported through a carefully established set of addresses in Delaware, that discreet American state most favored by the CIA for its secrecy codes, which practically matched those of any offshore tax haven.

He traveled north from Kennington to Camden and westward from there to Acton only to backtrack eastward to Whitechapel, seeking out the sidestreet hirers. From each he received matching agreements that they'd take the credit-card imprint as a guarantee of the vehicle's return, but the Final settlement would have to be fully in cash, which meant they had a tax-free, no-record transaction and he could destroy the credit-card slips. Further, habitual protectiveness.

The Kennington car was a three-year-old Vauxhall. O'Farrell guessed the odometer had been wound completely back at least once and possibly twice. It was misfiring on one cylinder, and the unbalanced wheels juddered at anything over forty-five miles an hour. There was rust in the rear fender and the tire treads were only just legally permissible. O'Farrell regarded it as completely anonymous and therefore perfect.

He approached Rivera's Hampstead home from a mile to the north and drove by without slowing or paying any obvious attention, reserving the more detailed surveillance until later and merely noting as he passed that the house front was near the road, shielded only by a moderately high wall and ornate double gates. He clocked at twenty-five minutes the distance to the High Holborn embassy, but knew there would be differences depending upon times and traffic congestion. He did not pause at High Holborn, either. It took longer, another fifteen minutes, to reach the Pimlico home of the Cuban's mistress, and again he drove by. But in Chelsea O'Farrell stopped, deciding it was necessary to record the timings. He found a pub on the Embankment, overlooking the Thames, and carried the gin and tonic outside; it was warm and pleasant to sit on the bench, although he could not actually see the water because of the river wall. Both sides of the road were marked with double yellow lines, which meant parking was illegal; a car did stop with one man who remained at the wheel, and O'Farrell watched it without apparently doing so until a girl emerged from a house farther up the road, was enthusiastically kissed, and then driven away in the direction of the city. There were five metered parking bays, all occupied but every vehicle empty. The only other occupant of the river-bordering benches was a tramp absorbed by the unseen contents of a Safeways carrier bag. He was on his own, O'Farrell decided.

He'd seen the double measure put into his glass from the approved jigger used in English pubs, but it seemed weak, and then O'Farrell reflected that they often did these days in American bars, too. The only way to get a decent drink seemed to be to make it himself. Not that he intended taking a bottle to Courtfield Road or any other of the boardinghouses. No booze yesterday, he remembered proudly. He wouldn't have more than one or two drinks today.

He entered the times into his pocketbook but without any designation of what they represented so they would be meaningless to anyone but himself. He had a second drink—considering and then rejecting the idea of eating—and then a third because it was still comparatively early and it was pleasant, sitting in the sun. So he had a fourth. It was then that he was sure he spotted the watchers monitoring him—two men in a Ford that had gone three times along the same stretch of the Embankment. Fuck them, he thought belligerently.

It took O'Farrell an hour and fifteen minutes to reach the Windsor ground where Rivera customarily played polo, which was out of season just now, and even longer to get back into London, because by then the evening rush hour was at its height. He decided to utilize it, going to the embassy again and then stopwatching himself back up to Hampstead and the ambassador's residence on Christ-church Hill. The journey took an extra ten minutes.

It was more difficult than the previous night for O'Farrell to find an unlicensed restaurant, but he did, and decided the search had been worthwhile because the food was better. He'd parked the car away from Courtfield Road, of course. He didn't want the boardinghouse owner, whose shirt that morning had been the same as the previous day, to make any connection between himself and the vehicle. Walking back from the restaurant, O'Farrell passed two hotels and three pubs and studiously ignored every one. Made it, he thought, in his room; knew I could make it.

Connors and Wentworth, who'd drawn the dogwatch again, slumped in their observation car outside. Connors had located his cassette case and was happier than the previous night, the Walkman loose against his head.

“You like Mahler?” he asked the other man.

“Gotta tin ear,” Wentworth said. “What do you think of today?” They'd picked up a full report from the day team.

“Careful guy,” Connors said. “Covering all the angles.”

Two hundred yards away, sleepless in his darkened room, O'Farrell forced himself to confront the awareness he had been avoiding throughout the day. It hadn't been necessary to cover the routes as thoroughly as he had, filling up the entire day, certainly not to drive all the way out to Windsor and back again.