"No problem," Erickson said. "No one at all."

O'Farrell's drunken frown returned as he looked at the two men, and then his face cleared, in understanding. "A baby-sitter! You gave me a baby-sitter from, the embassy for the flight over, in case I got confessional."

"Just a precaution," Petty confirmed.

"You think I'm that fucked up!" There was a schoolboy pleasure in saying rude words to the section head.

"You're tired; had a few drinks," Petty said. "We'll talk in a day or two."

"What if I had spoken to someone on the flight?" O'Farrell persisted, with alcoholic bravado.

"Couldn't have happened," Petty said conversationally. "You'd have been interrupted, diverted. Forget it."

Although the limousine was already almost to the Beltway, O'Farrell said, "Shouldn't we tell the driver...?" and then trailed away, in belated awareness. "Where am I going?"

"Fort Pearce," Petty said. "We need to debrief you. Give you a few days' rest as well ... just a few days."

O'Farrell knew Fort Pearce; years ago-he couldn't recall exactly when-he'd attended a couple of advanced training courses there on behind-the-lines survival. It was officially designated an army installation but in reality it was a CIA complex, mostly for warfare and sabotage instruction. He said, "So I'm being locked up in the stockade?"

"Of course you're not," Erickson said without conviction. "It's a debriefing, that's all. And the people at Fort Pearce have the highest clearance, so it's the most obvious and convenient place."

O'Farrell didn't believe it. He wondered, although without any fear, what was going to happen to him. Whatever, he deserved it. He said, "How long is a few days?"

"Two ... three ..." Petty started.

"Whatever. A few days ..." Erickson said.

"What then?" O'Farrell demanded.

"Let's get the debriefing over first." Petty said.

Erickson indicated the liquor cabinet recessed between the jump seats. "You want a drink?"

"No," O'Farrell said at once. He squinted through the darkened windows of the car, but could not gauge where they were. "I'm not going to become unreliable," he said, and at once regretted the remark. It sounded as if he were scared, which he wasn't, not yet.

"We know that!" Petty said.

"Not even a consideration," Erickson added.

"Just important to get you fit again," Petty said.

The back-and-forth delivery seemed to be ingrained, thought O'Farrell. Annoyed at being patronized, he began, "I'm not ..." but stopped, deciding it wasn't worth the bother. He wished he'd taken Erickson's offered drink, although he was proud that he'd held back. Would Fort Pearce be dry? He couldn't remember from his previous visits, although he doubted this was going to be anything like his previous visits. He said, "You debriefing me?"

Petty shook his head. "There are experts at Fort Pearce."

"Specialists," Erickson finished.

"In what?" O'Farrell demanded pointedly.

"Everything." Petty was avoiding him once more.

How much O'Farrell would have liked, just once, to have trapped the man, talked him into a corner and pinned him into some definite commitment. Feeling it was time-and surprised they hadn't prompted him into it in their ventriloquist's act-O'Farrell said, "It was a disaster. I know it was a disaster...."

Petty raised his hand, stopping the apology. "Not now ..." the section head said.

"Better later ..."

"More appropriate ..."

"I just wanted you to know."

"We do ..."

"Completely ..."

The vehicle slowed and O'Farrell saw they were at the gates of Fort Pearce, the driver already going through the identification and entry formalities. O'Farrell would have expected the passengers to be checked, but they weren't. The car went on for quite a long way inside the complex, wending along roads between barracks-type buildings, before stopping. When O'Farrell emerged, it was into an area he did not know from his other visits. They stood before a white-painted, clapboard building styled like barracks but taller, two storeys. The bottom floor was encircled by a covered veranda reached by steps wide enough for two or three people to climb abreast. But they didn't. Petty led, O'Farrell followed, waved forward, with Erickson at the rear. The prisoner was under close escort, thought O'Farrell. There was a guard at the entrance, and Petty made the identification before leading on with apparent familiarity down the wide, polished-clean corridor. All the doors leading onto it were closed and there was no noise from behind any of them. Halfway down was a bulletin board forlornly bare of any notices. O'Farrell realized that after all the drinking he needed a bathroom. He looked around for one; none of the doors were designated or marked, not even with numbers.

Petty entered one practically at the end. It led into an unexpectedly expansive office whose occupant was already standing, smiling, in front of his desk. O'Farrell stared at the man curiously. He looked impossibly young, practically college age. He nodded to Petty and Erickson, previous acquaintances, but held out his hand to O'Farrell. "Lambert, John Lambert," he said. "And you're Charles O'Farrell. Is it Charles or Chuck?"

"It varies," O'Farrell said. It sounded like a cocktail-party greeting and Lambert actually seemed dressed for one in his subdued Ivy League suit, pin-collared shirt, and inconspicuous club tie. Lambert wouldn't be his real name; probably adopted just for this encounter. The man's nose wrinkled against the pervading tobacco smell.

"Want you to understand something," Petty said. "John's cleared for everything. He knows what you do and all about Rivera and the accident with his wife."

"It wasn't an accident," O'Farrell said quietly. He knew now why the two men had met him at Dulles Airport. Lambert had to be personally introduced and guaranteed, by people he trusted, for the debriefing to progress at all. He guessed Lambert was a psychologist more highly cleared than Symmons, one of the get-your-head-right brigade. The man really did look young.

"We'll get to that in time," Lambert said dismissively. "Not now. You'll be bushed after the flight."

How much of the tiredness was genuine fatigue and how much was alcohol-induced? O'Farrell wondered. He said, "I'm okay."

"Tomorrow's soon enough," Lambert said. "Let's get settled in first."

Petty and Erickson, their function fulfilled, looked at each other, and Petty said, "We'll be getting back. We've got a drive."

"A few days," O'Farrell said, sufficiently sober now to be unsettled by what was happening. It never had before, after any previous mission. But then, he reminded himself, no previous mission had ended like this one.

"That's what we're talking about," Petty said.

Why was the talk like this: the casual chitchat of a cocktail party! Why weren't they talking about a blown-apart woman named Estelle Rivera who had a well-mannered, cute little kid who'd missed being blown apart with her only by a fluke, because a car had been parked in an inconvenient place and it was raining?

"I killed someone!" O'Farrell yelled, so unexpectedly loud that Erickson, by the door, jumped. "I murdered an innocent person!"

"Easy now, easy," Lambert soothed. "Not tonight. Later."

"Why's everyone avoiding it, as if it never happened! Why later?"

"No one's avoiding it," Lambert said, still soothing. "We'll talk it all through, you and me, tomorrow."

Another twenty-four hours-twelve at least-for them to discover if he'd left any trace? A possibility, O'Farrell knew. What would they do to him if he had, if there were the likelihood of the whole mess becoming a public disaster? He shifted, unsettled; the business of these men was killing potential embarrassment, wasn't it? Wrong, perhaps, to erupt as he had. Could he back down without appearing to do so? He said, "What will the result be, after we've talked it all through?" and wished he'd thought of something better, something stronger.

"We won't know that until we've talked, will we?" said Lambert, making a perceptible gesture for the other two men to leave. "Let's go see where you're going to bunk down."

Despite the suggestion, it wasn't a bunk. It was a bed in a single room a little farther along the same corridor. There were built-in closets and a private bathroom, a remote-controlled television, and Newsweek and Time on a table separating two easy chairs. Like every motel room in which he'd ever stayed, O'Farrell thought. He was glad to see the bathroom.

"Anything you want-food, booze, anything-just pick up the phone and tell the operator," Lambert said.

There were two phones, one beside the bed, the second on the magazine table. O'Farrell saw that neither had a dialing mechanism. He wasn't sure, but he thought the man had just slightly stressed the word "booze" when he'd made the offer. Testing, O'Farrell said, "It was a long flight. I wouldn't mind walking around a little."

Lambert grimaced, a man imparting rules he hasn't made and doesn't approve. "There's not been time to get you any authorization documents," he said. "You know what the security's like here: the mice carry ID!"

The man who looked too young to be here at all was trying his best, O'Farrell conceded. He said, "No walks?"

"Afraid not."

O'Farrell indicated the telephones. "What about outside calls? I need to speak to my wife."

"Not just yet," Lambert said apologetically. "Maybe tomorrow."

"Or the day after," O'Farrell said.

"Maybe," Lambert agreed.

"You going to lock the door?"

"No."

"There's a guard at the back as well as at the front of the building?"

"Yes," Lambert confirmed.

"Where I would be stopped, forcibly if necessary, if I tried to go by."

"It's the way they're trained in a place like this."

"So I'm under arrest? Imprisoned?" O'Farrell demanded.

"I wouldn't have described it as that."

"Describe it to me your way," O'Farrell insisted.

"Protected," Lambert said. "Extremely well protected. I would have thought you'd be grateful."

The men rode for a long time without speaking to each other. Petty contacted an emergency number from the car phone and had himself patched through to McCarthy for a brief, monosyllabic conversation. When he replaced the instrument, Petty said, "Our antiterrorist unit at the embassy has been allowed access by the British. More theories than you can shake a stick at. Current favorite is that it's political, Latin American-based. Forensics has identified the explosive as Semtex and the metal left from the detonator as of Soviet manufacture."

"Looks good, then?" Erickson, was pleased to get in first with a question rather than having to provide an answer.

"Exactly as it was planned, apart from the victim," Petty confirmed. Before Erickson could speak again, he said, "So what about O'Farrell?"

"I think we need to get the result of the debriefing to be sure," Erickson said. "He looked as flaky as hell when he came off that airplane. And there was the booze. There was quite a bit of it in London, too."

"He seemed to sober up quickly enough," Petty said. "But there's a lot of guilt there. He's supposed to be trained to control guilt."

"Retire him?"

"McCarthy wants to talk to me about it."

"What's there to talk about?"

Petty shrugged. "Who can tell? You know what a devious bastard McCarthy is. He's had quite a conversation with Lambert, apparently."

"This time we seem to have gotten away with it," Erickson said. "I think to risk using O'Farrell again would be madness."

Petty gave another shrug. "Who knows?" he said again.

"In the immediate future we don't have to get within a million miles of Jose Gaviria Rivera."

Back in Fort Pearce, O'Farrell actually considered kneeling by the bedside, like a kid, but shook his head against the idea, looking around the empty room in positive embarrassment. He tried to pray, lying in bed in the darkness, but shrugged that attempt off, too. There could be no forgiveness, no absolution, for what he'd done. Had there ever been?

TWENTY-THREE.

IT WAS an odd room. Because of the construction of the building, it should have had an outside window, but it didn't. Neither did it really look like a proper office. There was a desk and a telephone, but books were haphazardly stacked all over it, and more books spilled over from the bookcase beyond. The television was on, showing a game in which men and women who were supposed not to know each other were romantically paired, and Lambert was propped on the edge of the desk, watching it. At O'Farrell's entry, he turned like a man surprised and then waved him in.

"Good to see you," Lambert said, as if their last meeting had been a long time ago. "Don't these programs blow your mind! Can you imagine making yourself look stupid in front of millions of people!"

"I've never seen it before," O'Farrell said. "But no, I can't imagine it."

Lambert held the remote control in his hand for several moments before reluctantly switching the television off and turning his full attention upon O'Farrell. They fascinate me," he said. "Just fascinate me."

Definitely a psychologist, O'Farrell thought. He supposed it had been obvious but he'd hoped Lambert wasn't. He looked around for shapes to fit into holes but couldn't see any. There were couches and chairs around a dead fire-place and two extension telephones on side tables. There were a lot of large plants in pots. O'Farrell recognized a rubber tree; its leaves were very dirty and dry. All the plants sagged from lack of water.

Lambert gestured vaguely toward the easy chairs and couches and said, "Make yourself at home. You like some coffee? I've just made some fresh coffee."

"Thank you," O'Farrell said. He was indifferent to the coffee but it pleased him to have Lambert fetch and carry for him. Why? he asked himself at once. Careful; he wasn't the psychologist.

Lambert served the coffee with powdered cream and sugar in little pots on the side. With his head still bent, the man said, "So you killed her? The wrong target?"

O'Farrell blinked at the abruptness. "Yes," he said. His headache wasn't too bad, considering the previous day's intake, but he felt tired, although he'd slept.

"It was an accident."

"How the hell can you say that!"