Free O'Farrell's Law by Brian Freemantle Page A

the child’s benefit, they made light conversation during the meal, and afterward O’Farrell played spacemen with Billy while the women cleared away. The boy was allowed to watch an hour of television, and while Ellen and Jill were bathing him before bed O’Farrell made a third drink, a large one, and kept it defiantly in his hand when Jill came back into the room. She didn’t appear to notice it.
    By unspoken agreement Ellen’s problems weren’t raised again during the evening, but the subject hung between them, like a room divider, all the time.
    That night, in Billy’s bed, lying on her back in the darkness, Jill said, “Christ, what a mess!”
    â€œIt’s not too bad, not yet,” O’Farrell said, trying to be realistic.
    â€œIt’s not too good, either.”
    â€œI tried to talk to Billy at lunchtime about drugs.”
    He felt her head turn toward him in the darkness. “And?”
    â€œHe spoke about it,” O’Farrell tried to explain. “This little kid tried to speak about it like he knew what we were talking about and all the time he was playing fucking Star Wars!”
    â€œShe’s got to go to an attorney, get the proper court payments set up,” Jill insisted. “I don’t give a damn how bad his own situation is. I don’t see why Ellea and Billy should suffer because of it; he created it all.”
    â€œYes,” O’Farrell agreed.
    â€œShe married too young,” Jill said abruptly.
    â€œThe same age as us.”
    â€œI got you; she got a bastard.”
    What words would she use if she really knew? O’Farrell said, “Maybe we were wrong, making it possible for her to buy the apartment. It’s a hell of a drain on what she earns.”
    â€œWhat can we do, apart from pressure her about a lawyer?”
    â€œI don’t know,” admitted O’Farrell.
    â€œWhat about money? Couldn’t we make her some sort of allowance?”
    Not if he went to Petty and said he wanted to quit. “Yes,” O’Farrell promised. “If we can get her to accept it, we could make her an allowance. We’ll definitely do that.”
    â€œI love you,” Jill said.
    Would she if she really knew? he wondered again.
    CIA surveillance picked up the Cuban ambassador the moment he left High Holborn. The alert that he was probably making for London airport was radioed from the trailing car when the official vehicle gained the motorway and confirmed when it turned off onto the Heathrow spur. The observer risked following closely behind Rivera at the check-in desk, to discover his destination, but it was the driver who took over to purchase a ticket and board the plane to Brussels, to avoid any chance recognition. Before the aircraft cleared English airspace watchers were already assembling at Brussels, waiting: the CIA officer from London headed back immediately upon arrival, again to avoid possible identification.
    Rivera took a taxi into the center of the capital and went through an effort at trail clearing that earned the professionals’ sneers, it was so amateurish. They kept him easily under observation until he entered Pierre Belac’s nondescript office. The Agency had not risked installing any listening devices there. Had they done so, they would have heard Belac ask for a downpayment of thirty-five million dollars and Rivera agreeing without any argument, with an added, entrapping assurance that if Belac had any additional expenditures in excess of this advance sum he would be immediately recompensed. Even with a listening device, they could not have picked up Belac’s reaction, a repeat of his earlier and intense irritation at not having pitched the demand higher at their embassy meeting.
    At least, Belac reasoned at once, he had the authority to buy in addition and in excess of his thirty-five-million-dollar advance. Which he resolved to do; he would purchase a vast amount of Czech