O'Farrell's Law (6 page)

What the hell did this soft-handed poseur know about business! Belac nodded in agreement once more. “Awkward things, tanks. Cumbersome. Practically impossible to break down into any sort of discreetly transportable size. The shell has to be solid, you see?” Belac was enjoying himself, mainly because he knew how much money he was going to make, to within a thousand dollars. Spurred by his greed, Belac had on occasions taken chances and come close to disaster, although he'd always managed, just, to pull back. There wasn't going to be any danger here. This looked like the easiest deal with which he'd ever become involved. He continued, “But they are available. The United States had a lot mothballed, the majority in the Mojave Desert. The climate is perfect for preservation. Virtually no metal or engine deterioration at all.”

“Available?” queried Rivera.

“Periodically,” the Belgian said. “Fortunately for us, there is to be a surplus sale in the next two or three months.”

Everything seemed to be very easy, Rivera reflected, happy for the man to make his sales pitch. He said, “Fortunate indeed.”

“Providing the interest is not too intense,” Belac qualified. “There hasn't been any sort of release on the market for more than a year. Most of the important dealers throughout the world will be there, bidding.”

“And the bidding will be high?” Rivera guessed the profit Belac was writing in for himself would be huge.

“It will be a seller's market, won't it?” Belac said, answering question with question.

“You'll need to be able to outbid anyone else?” Rivera asked in apparent further anticipation. He found it difficult to believe that Belac was leading the bargaining precisely in the direction he wanted. It was almost too simple.

“If you are to get what you want,” the Belgian agreed.

“Substantial funds in advance, in fact?”

“Yes,” Belac said. It was too early to start talking figures yet: there was more he could get. Picking up the shopping list, Belac said, “And there would seem to be an omission.”

“Omission?” He would not remain indispensable and unmovable if things were left out, Rivera thought, immediately alarmed.

“Spares,” Belac said. “The stipulation is for a maximum of fifty tanks but nowhere is there a mention of spares for them. You know that something as inconsequential as a failed spark plug can incapacitate a vehicle costing a million dollars?” Appearing at once to realize his error, Belac quickly added, “Probably a lot more than a million dollars.”

“Yes,” Rivera conceded. “I suppose it would. So there must be an additional allowance for spares?”

“Essential,” the Belgian said. “A tank that won't work is a useless piece of metal, isn't it?”

Rivera guessed the man had a scrap-metal business to accommodate that eventuality as well. “Spares should be added to the list,” he agreed.

“A very substantial list,” mused the Belgian, shifting the responsibility for guiding the conversation onto Rivera.

“How long, to provide everything?” the diplomat demanded.

Belac humped his shoulders, reluctant to be trapped too easily into a commitment. “Three months,” he said. “Maybe four.”

“There would need to be a completion date,” Rivera pressed. The letter accompanying the order, a letter only Rivera had read, had insisted on six months as a maximum.

“Four,” Belac said.

The moment for which he'd been patiently waiting, Rivera recognized. ‘This is not the business of legally binding contracts,” he said. “What guarantees will exist between us?”

“Mutual, reciprocal trust,” Belac said easily.

Horseshit, thought Rivera. “Would it not be better, perhaps, if I took some of the smaller items elsewhere, spread the order among lesser dealers?”

“No!” Belac said, greedily and too quickly. “I can handle it all. It's far better to keep it all simple, just between us two.”

“You can guarantee the four months then?”

“My word,” Belac said. He couldn't be forced to keep it.

“We haven't yet discussed price,” Rivera said, spread-eagling himself upon the sacrificial stone.

Belac went through the charade of examining the list again, as if he were only then making his calculations. Rivera guessed he had nearly everything priced practically down to the last half-dollar.

“Ninety million,” Belac announced. Hurriedly again, he added, “But that would merely be for the purchases. In addition there would have to be allowances for transportation. Money will also have to be paid out for the switching of the End-User Certificates. So there will need to be provision for extensive commission payments. Say another ten million.”

Most definitely the need for extensive commission payments, thought Rivera; the euphoria swept through him. Even if he modestly maintained his own personal commission at ten percent on the purchase price, that would mean ten million. Keeping any excitement from his voice, Rivera said, “Won't there also need to be a substantial, instantly available sum to enable the on-the-spot bidding for the tanks?”

“A further fifty million,” Belac declared at once.

Which meant a further five million for him, mentally echoed Rivera, feeling another flush of excitement. He would keep his share to ten percent: on such figures it would be greedy to think of more. On a profit of fifteen million he'd definitely quit, when the deal was completed. “There will be a need to consult, of course,” he said. “But I don't see the slightest problem with those figures.”

Immediate anger surged through Belac. He'd thought a clear twenty-million-dollar profit, which was what he'd allowed himself, to be as high as he dared push it, but from the other man's reaction he could have gone even higher! “That's good to hear,” Belac said, although it hadn't been good to hear at all.

“I would expect a response within a week.”

“Let's meet again in a week, then?” The Belgian sat with the complacency of a winner in everything, the anger going. There still might be ways to edge the profit up. And twenty million was a lot of money anyway.

“And this time let me come to you in Brussels,” Rivera offered. The man would feel more confident in his own surroundings.

Belac hesitated briefly. “As you wish.”

Rivera worked for an hour after the Belgian's departure, setting out accurately everything about the encounter until it came to Belac's estimate for transportation costs and the necessary bribes. To the Belgian's figure of ten million Rivera added the majority of the fifteen million he intended diverting to himself. He attached a separate sheet setting out the implacable insistence of his unnamed supplier that all finance and communication should channel through him, in London, with the unnecessary reminder that it was how every successful transaction had been conducted in the past. He personally sealed the communication in the special satchel and personally again ensured it was safely placed within the diplomatic bag. Back in the seclusion of his office, Rivera stood looking out over High Holborn, satisfied with his day's work. With his personal commission added to the price set by Pierre Belac, the whole deal amounted to $165 million.

How much cocaine would be needed from Colombia for worldwide sales to raise such a sum? Whatever, Rivera knew it would be available. It always was just as there were always buyers. He thought once more how glad he was not to be involved at that end of the chain.

The investigation into Pierre Belac's illegal movement of American hi-tech prohibited under the Export Administration Act of 1979 was originally begun by the U.S. Customs Authority, the regulatory body for such policing. When the scale and enterprise of the Belgian's activities were realized, the operation was necessarily extended to include the Federal Bureau of Investigation to work within the United States, and the CIA to liaise externally. It was therefore a CIA task force that monitored the man's flight from Brussels to London and followed him from Heathrow Airport to the door of the Cuban embassy at 167 High Holborn. A number of photographs were taken of Belac entering the building and more of his leaving. He was followed back to the airport, and on the returning aircraft a CIA officer sat just two rows behind in the economy-class section.

A complete report was included in that night's diplomatic dispatch from the U.S. embassy in the Belgian capital to Washington. A cross-reference noted that the report should be considered in conjunction with a report upon Jose Gaviria Rivera that was being separately pouched from London that same night.

FIVE

A
T THE
end of the O'Hare concourse there was a liquor booth and O'Farrell stopped and bought a bottle of Bombay gin and some screw-topped tonic.

Jill stood apart from him, frowning, and when he went back to her she said, “What did you do that for?”

“Ellen doesn't usually have any drink in the apartment.”

“So?”

“So I thought it might be an idea to take some in.”

“Why? We never have before. Who needs it?”

“It might be an idea, that's all.” O'Farrell's voice was weary rather than irritated; trained always to subdue any extreme emotion—and certainly anger—he never fought with Jill. In the early days of their marriage she'd sometimes tried to provoke arguments, to blow off steam, but he'd never responded, and over the years she'd stopped bothering. She'd never openly said so, but he guessed she despised him for that, too. Another clerklike weakness, unwillingness to fight on any level.

He'd set up the car rental ahead of time, so all the documentation was ready. O'Farrell started to put the luggage on the rear seat but then changed his mind, stowing it in the trunk, so the plastic bag containing the liquor was out of sight.

They drove for a long time without speaking, and then Jill said, “You all right?”

“What sort of question is that?”

“The sort of question a wife can ask her husband.”

“Of course I'm all right. I'm fine. Why?”

“I just wondered.”

“There must be a reason.” That had been the time to drop it, not persist with any further challenge.

“You've just seemed kind of strange a couple of times lately, that's all.”

“Strange like what?” Stop it! he thought, let go!

Beside him the woman shrugged. “Nothing I can point at. Why don't we forget it?”

O'Farrell opened his mouth and then closed it again, taking her advice. Damn the stupidity of buying the booze. She was right; who needed it?

Ellen had a ground-floor apartment on the Evanston side of Chicago, not quite close enough to the lake to be cripplingly expensive but not far enough away to be reasonable, either. She and Billy must have been watching through the window, because they both came running out before O'Farrell and Jill got completely from the car. There were kisses and hugs, and Billy kept thrusting an electric toy into O'Farrell's face until he paid attention. Closer, O'Farrell saw it was a spacecraft that worked off batteries, and that it could be manipulated to turn into a space figure as well. Billy said there was an entire fleet of different designs.

Inside the apartment, O'Farrell offered his daughter the plastic bag and announced, “Supplies!”

Ellen accepted it without any surprise and said, “Great!” and O'Farrell was relieved.

Ellen had moved the boy into her room. O'Farrell hung up his garment bag and stored Jill's small case where Billy slept, a bedroom festooned with posters and with toys neatly in a box, a catcher's mitt uppermost. There was a plastic cover over the video machine and its game-playing keyboard. O'Farrell guessed Ellen had tidied up the room before their arrival.

Outside Billy was on the living-room floor, squatting with his legs splayed beneath him but actually sitting, the way kids his age were able to do. Jill and Ellen were in the kitchen, talking soft-voiced by the coffeemaker. As O'Farrell entered, he heard Ellen say, “Mother, I've told you: you're panicking about nothing!”

“I don't regard it as nothing!” Jill said.

‘There've been incidents and so there was a precautionary meeting, that's all!” said Ellen. “The school has behaved very responsibly and I'm grateful.”

O'Farrell stood without intruding into the conversation, comparing the two women. They were very similar, unquestionably mother and daughter. And Jill stood up to the comparison very well, O'Farrell judged, proudly. Maybe just a little thicker around the hips but still pert-breasted, as firm as her daughter. Stomach was as flat, too: she worked out at the clinic, he knew, practicing the fitness exercises with which she treated others. Certainly as clear-skinned and practically as facially unlined as Ellen, and only he knew that Jill needed a hairdresser's help now to keep her hair matchingly blond. Very beautiful; very beautiful indeed. He felt a positive jump of emotion, a stomach churn: he loved her so much.

“What are the police doing about it?” Jill persisted, setting out the cups.

“The best they can.”

“What's that?” O'Farrell came in.

Ellen gave her father a sad smile, wishing he had not asked. “Just that,” she conceded lamely. “One of the drug officers talked at the meeting. Said it was easy enough to pick off the street pushers—which they do, of course—but that they're replaced the following day. It's like a pyramid, he said: if they get lucky, they might catch the guy from whom the street dealer gets his supplies, but rarely the one above him. And hardly ever the real organizers, the guys who are making millions … billions.”

“You know what I think!” Jill said with sudden vehemence. “I think they ought to kill the bastards! Make it a capital offense and execute them; no appeal, no excuse, nothing. Dead!”

“They do in some parts of the world, apparently,” said the younger woman.

O'Farrell supposed it was easy for Jill to feel as she did. He said, “Is there anything we can do?”