Bannerman's Ghosts

by John R. Maxim

  Clew said, “I will give you two minutes.”

  “I do wish you hadn’t messed up his hair. I think he’d almost rather have been shot.”

  “I said two minutes. You’re going to use them on his hair?”

  Bourne gestured toward the pistol that Clew was still holding. “We’ll start the clock when you’ve put that away. It inhibits a full and frank exchange.”

  Clew twisted his fanny pack around to his side. He placed the Beretta inside, safety off. With his thumb, he probed for his PDA’s recorder, hoping that he’d found the right button. He said to Bourne, “So, let’s hear it.”

  Artemus Bourne drew an envelope from his pocket. “I need to find someone. I think you can help me. You won’t do so out of the goodness of your heart, so I’m offering an exchange of information.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “This envelope holds details of an illegal arms shipment that is now on its

  way to Sierra Leone in defiance of a U.N. embargo. The supplier of the arms is a man named Savran Bobik. I am told that he’s something of a horror. Do you know him?”

  “Works out of Luanda? I’ve heard of him,” Clew answered.

  “The intended recipient is a rebel commander, not to mention a cannibal, named Colonel Mobote. That name is also not unknown to you, I’m sure.”

  Clew nodded.

  “The shipment contains hundreds of Claymore mines with which he intends to mount a terror offensive against any and all residents of Freetown. It also includes thirty shoulder-launched missiles with which he intends to destroy any aircraft that try to use Freetown’s Lungi Airport. If you’ve seen that airport, you know how easily he can do it. The arms, as we speak, are aboard a small freighter that is making its way up the African Coast. They will be off-loaded fifteen miles at sea and taken ashore under cover of night.”

  “Explain to me why you would care,” said Clew.

  “I don’t. I’m simply offering a trade. That shipment, incidentally, includes other goodies. A few personal luxuries for the colonel’s comfort and assorted herbs and sauces to improve his cuisine. One crate will contain a quantity of heroin. It’s intended to ease any of his troops’ inhibitions where slaughtering the innocent is concerned.”

  “And why the sudden interested in Sierra Leone? You haven’t finished looting Angola.”

  “I have interests in a great many places, Mr. Clew. Might we stick to the subject at hand?”

  “You have the name of the ship?”

  “I have everything, Mr. Clew, including the coordinates of the rendezvous point. If you’d had the grace to meet with me on Monday, you’d have had more time to make your arrangements. As we speak, however, you have less than eighteen hours. I assume that you’ll want this done off the books and will not be involving our armed forces.”

  He was right, but Clew said, “That’s a lot to assume.”

  “If a thing be done, then ‘twere well it be done quickly,” said Bourne who was more or less quoting MacBeth. “Whomever you use, they should hit fast and hard. The freighter’s crew may not resist, but Mobote’s men will because they know that Mobote will hack off their arms if they should come home empty-handed.” Bourne paused. He cocked his head. “Did I just make a joke?”

  “Hacked off arms? Empty handed? No, that didn’t quite make it.”

  Another pause. Bourne muttered that phrase to himself. He said, “No, you’re right. Something missing there, correct?”

  “Something missing was better. Now, if you don’t mind…”

  “Ah, yes. Where was I? We were taking that shipment. You should instruct whomever you use to wait until these people have headed back ashore and then blow them out of the water. You should insist that the cargo be sent to the bottom because…need I say it? You don’t want it changing hands. And you don’t want those drugs in circulation.”

  Bourne raised a finger. He’d had another thought. “Oh, be sure to tell them not to shoot at the freighter. It will have some twenty children on board.”

  “What children?”

  “Slaves. All young girls, none older than twelve, all Angolan and some are quite comely. They were picked up in Cabinda for sale up in Gambia where they’ll be forced to work on some peanut plantation. The slave trade is still in full vigor, I fear. You don’t want their little bodies washing up on the beach. That would make for bad press, even there.”

  “So what happens to them?”

  Bourne did not seem to have considered their fate. He said, “I suppose I’d let them proceed on to Gambia. Board the freighter when it docks. Time enough to search it then. Have the Red Cross on hand to send them home.”

  “That’s if they’re still on board,” said Roger Clew. “Slavers have been known to dump their cargo.”

  An impatient sigh. “So have your ‘whomever’ radio the captain. Let him know that they know he has children on board that he mustn’t drown them if he wants to live. When they’re saved you can give them all scholarships to Harvard. There you have it, Mr. Clew. There’s your plan.”

  Bourne paused. He waved a hand as if erasing those remarks. He said quietly, “I do not deal in children.”

  Clew had made no move toward the envelope Bourne was holding. “What is it that you want in return?”

  “Do you know, or know of, Elizabeth Stride?”

  “The Black Angel? Sure. What about her?”

  Bourne stared. “You know her? You’ve actually met her?”

  “Let’s get to why you’re asking, Mr. Bourne.”

  “I want only the answer to two simple questions. First, is Elizabeth Stride still alive? If she is, where can she be found? And I hasten to assure you that I mean her no harm. All I want is a meeting, nothing more.”

  “Just a meeting?”

  “Only that. I’ll make it quite worth her while.”

  Clew curled his lip. “Stride is an assassin. No one has ‘just a meeting’ with assassins.”

  “Stride “is?” Present tense? Shall I take that to mean…?”

  “Take it any way you like. What do you want with her?”

  “Even assassins have personal lives and this is a personal matter. I have no wish to hire her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Then, why?”

  “I’ll say it again. It’s a personal matter. It is none of your affair, but this envelope is. I won’t offer it twice, Mr. Clew.”

  On the matter of hiring her, Clew tended to believe him, but only because Stride was never in it for the money. Her motive was strictly retribution at first, and later to discourage those who hunted her. Clew couldn’t imagine her working for Bourne, but he surely hoped to use her in some way.

  As for the envelope Bourne was offering in trade, embargoed arms were being shipped all the time and this would be a drop in the bucket. On the other hand, he didn’t want to learn next week that a plane full of some relief agency’s personnel had plunged into the ocean off Freetown. He didn’t want to know that he could have prevented it. Those kidnapped children were a wild card, of course. It was probably true that Bourne wouldn’t deal in children, but he wouldn’t have cared about freeing them either. But Bourne was hoping that he, Clew, would care. Either that, or Bourne had some other reason for not wanting that ship attacked and sunk. Men like Bourne always have other reasons.

  But the main thing Bourne wanted was Elizabeth Stride and Clew neither knew her, nor could he produce her. She’d been dead for three or four years. Her death, as he recalled, was more or less natural. He knew of her, sure. Lot’s of people knew of her. He’d never laid eyes on the woman himself. He knew her by reputation only. He was never quite sure how much of it had been earned and how much of it had been folklore. Whatever the mix, she was certainly deadly. And as for Bourne’s claim of no sinister intent…

  “I’m not sure I can help you, Mr. Bourne.”

  “That…sounds as if you can, but you won’t.”

  Okay, thought Clew. We’ll play Let’s Pretend. “I don’t know
where she is at this moment.”

  Bourne eyebrow went up. “And once again, that sounds as if you know she’s alive. Is she? Do you know that for a fact?”

  “It’s been more than a year since I’ve heard anything about her.” This was literally true, but still a lie.

  “And she was…and is…in this country, correct?”

  “I had no reason to ask. I don’t know.”

  “When you say you heard, from whom did you hear it? Was it from a reliable source?”

  “Oh, indeed.”

  “Would this source have been Paul Bannerman, by chance? You are still his control, are you not?”

  “I may have worked with Paul Bannerman. No one’s ever controlled him. Anyway, he’s pretty much out of the game.”

  Bourne snorted. “If you say so, Mr. Clew.”

  “The man has a life. He’s trying to live it. You shouldn’t believe all you hear.”

  “From what I hear, he got back in the game with a vengeance after the events of September 11th.”

  “So did everyone else, Mr. Bourne.”

  “Has a life, you say. Just trying to live it. And yet he seems to know every assassin on two continents and surrounds himself with the cream of the crop. Is that what one does when one is out of the game?”

  “In the first place,” said Clew, “they are not assassins. They are, or were, highly skilled contract agents.”

  “Forgive me. My mistake. Freelance contract agents. They only kill when inconvenienced; is that right?”

  “In the second place,” said Clew, “those people are his friends. They look out for each other. Friends do that.”

  “Within the happy confines of Westport, Connecticut. So he’s just a simple suburbanite now, doing violence only to crabgrass?”

  “And moles.”

  “And these friends of his have all bought charcoal grills and have taken up golf, I imagine.”

  “I imagine.”

  Bourne snorted. “I’m told by my own friend, the Secretary of State, that no one seems to know how many they are. But you must know. Do you?”

  “I do not.”

  “I think that’s a fib. I’d bet that you know exactly.”

  Clew didn’t. Bannerman’s core group was less than a dozen, but at any given time there might be twenty more in Westport. Some stay, some pass through. Only Bannerman knows. Clew saw no use in enlightening Bourne. He said, “Mr. Bourne, you’ve run out of time. Either give me that envelope or don’t.”

  But Bourne persisted. He said, “I’ve heard them referred to as ‘Bannerman’s Ghosts.’ Is that why? It is because they’re especially elusive or is it because no one knows?”

  Both, thought Clew, but that still isn’t why, and, believe me, you don’t want to find out. He said, “Have a nice day, Mr. Bourne.”

  “Or are they called his ‘ghosts’ because some of them, at least, are people who are widely believed to be dead?”

  Clew grunted. “Now I see where you’re going with this.”

  “Then I’ll ask it straight out. Might one of his ghosts…”

  “Be Elizabeth Stride? I don’t know, but I doubt it.”

  “Will you ask him?”

  “Waste of time. He’d want to know why I’m asking. I’d say, ‘Because Artemus Bourne wants to find her.’ It would be a very short conversation.”

  Bourne started to reply. Instead, he held up the envelope. “You’d be asking because you want to save lives. These arms will maim and kill a great many people if they are allowed to go ashore. You can keep that from happening. All I want is an address.”

  “So that you can kill and maim them with your own mines and missiles? Savran Bobik must be one of your competitors, correct?”

  “There are always mines and missiles. Their source is irrelevant. There are

  thousands of suppliers of illicit arms. Your own government, as you know, is the biggest by far. Please spare me the holier-than-thou.”

  Clew had no rebuttal. He said nothing.

  “As for Stride, you have my word that I intend her no harm. She’ll be perfectly safe and fifty thousand dollars richer. She’ll be free to melt away again with it.”

  Clew gestured toward the envelope. “I might see what I can do. First, I’ll see whether that shipment checks out. If it does, I’ll go into our database at State. If it shows a current location for this woman, I will ask her if she’s willing to see you.”

  Bourne exhaled slowly. “Please don’t take me for a fool. I know that there’s nothing of use in those files. But those files are less than complete, are they not? Your own are said to be so much better.”

  Clew, with effort, concealed his annoyance. Speaking of moles, he had just been informed that someone at State has been doing some digging. It was probably Bourne’s friend on the African desk. He had also been informed that Bourne was aware that Clew kept a set of files of his own. No harm there, however. His private files were no secret.

  Bourne said, “Oh, don’t pout. Yes, I’ve tried by other means. You are hardly the first person I’d have asked, Mr. Clew. I am perfectly aware of your feelings toward me.”

  “Does the FBI like you any better?” he asked.

  “They don’t have a file either. One is moved to wonder why. Even dead, she should still have a file.”

  “CIA?”

  “They have files on several Elizabeth Strides, all of whom have claimed to be the Black Angel and none are the genuine article. And those people need me. They wouldn’t have lied. So I’m reduced to coming to you, not hat in hand, but offering a nice quid pro quo. Do you want this envelope or not?”

  “And if she can’t be found? If she really is dead?”

  “You would have to convince me of that.”

  “If I find her,” said Clew, “and that’s still a big if, why would Stride agree to see you?”

  “You can give her this message. ‘He isn’t dead either.’ Say those words and she’ll know what you mean.”

  “Who is ‘he?’”

  “It’s a personal matter, Mr. Clew.”

  FIVE

  Clew took the envelope. He resumed his morning jog. He glanced back only once to see Chester Lilly walking slowly toward Bourne’s limousine. A loose cannon, that one. Not long on self-control. He saw Bourne, hands on hips, his lips moving, waiting. Bourne was clearly angry with Lilly. It wasn’t an act. Chester Lilly, he thought, was about to lose some skin. Clew was pleased with himself. He jogged on.

  As for the shipment of embargoed arms, Clew felt sure that Bourne’s information would be accurate, but only as far as it went. Bourne’s concern that no attack be made on the freighter leads one to suspect that he owns it. Or that one of his dozens of companies does. Bourne suggested that the freighter be allowed proceed after the arms had been off-loaded. Bourne had not, however, made that part of the deal. The ship was a smuggler. Worse than that, it was a slaver. It was going to be put out of business.

  Clew would ask the Liberians to handle this for him. Liberia borders on Sierra Leone and they’ve had their own problems with Mobote. The ship will be in their neighbor’s territorial waters, but they won’t lose sleep over that. He would ask them to wait for the arms to be off-loaded on the chance that there really were children on board. He would ask them to leave nothing floating, no survivors, whether the rebels resisted or not. He would tell them that if they tried to salvage those arms, they would do so at the cost of his friendship. He wouldn’t mention the drugs. Too much of a temptation. The Liberians could then feel free to board the freighter and escort it back to their waters. As Bourne had suggested, whether seriously or not, he would have the Red Cross meet the ship when it arrived. The Liberians could keep the ship for their trouble, plus any other cargo it carried. They would probably hang the captain from a cargo davit and leave him there to rot as an example.

  Then Clew would keep his end of the bargain. He would try to find Elizabeth Stride. He did not, however, promise that he would deliver her. But he’d look for her be
cause now he was curious. Is it possible, he wondered, that she’s really still alive? And what could make her so important to Bourne?

  He would run a scan of his private files, but he doubted that they’d yield much about her. As deadly as Elizabeth Stride might have been, he did not recall that any of her activities were of direct interest to his office. Stride had worked the Middle East at the time when he worked Europe. A different cast of characters, for the most part. But he had known the man who was her partner, and her lover, from

  the time when she did show up in Europe. Was she on the run then? He couldn’t recall. By that time, she’d long since had a price on her head and it hadn’t seemed to slow her down a bit.

  And nothing, for that matter, ever slowed Martin Kessler, the man she took up with in Europe. Kessler had already achieved near-mythic status long before he ever met Stride.

  Bourne said to tell Stride, “He isn’t dead either.” It occurred to Clew that Bourne was speaking of Kessler. If so, Bourne has either been misinformed or he’s dangling a lure that can’t possibly get nibbled because Kessler was definitely dead. There might be some hint of a question about Stride, but there was none at all about Kessler. And too bad, because Kessler was one of a kind. Kessler was technically the enemy back them. Well, not technically. Actually. But at least he was fun. He was nothing like the rest of those plodding, gray goons that East German Intelligence seemed to clone.

  Clew couldn’t recall how he and Stride got together. But it would be hard to conceive of a more unlikely couple. Stride, though not Jewish, worked for the Mossad. Clew had heard her described as a beautiful woman. With unusual eyes. They were her most striking feature. He’d heard her described as driven, no- nonsense, very cold and aloof, no soft edges. And there were those who thought that she was a lesbian, but that part, thought Clew, was probably horse shit. All a woman has to do to be tagged with that label is to let a few men make fools of themselves, hitting on her and getting blown off. Anyway, thought Clew, if that had been true, what was she doing with Kessler? More to the point, if she was a lesbian, what was someone like Kessler doing with her?