Bannerman's Ghosts

by John R. Maxim

  “Is Harry here now?”

  “As we speak, he and Adam are down at Jump & Phil’s. It’s all boarded up, so it’s private. Harry brought the twins with him. Do you remember the twins?”

  The Beasleys, thought Elizabeth. Donald and Dennis. Murderous, paunchy identical twins. Both would now be in their fifties. Been with Harry for years. “I saw one of them,” she said. “At Chamonix.”

  “They were both there,” said Waldo. “You just didn’t know it. See one, and the other one’s behind you.”

  “In any case,” said Molly, “they’re still settling a few things. But the trouble seems done with. We’ll all be gone soon. Harry’s thanking a few locals who’ve been a great help, including that girl who was kidnapped.”

  “You must have had more help than that,” said Elizabeth. “Who got the local cops to back off?”

  “Roger Clew. Paul called him early this morning before we left Westport to fly down here. Clew got the FBI to keep the law off us if we should run into problems. Have you ever met Roger, Elizabeth?"

  “I haven’t, but I know who he is.”

  “Which brings me back to my ‘small world’ remark. It turned out that Roger was about to call Paul because he had a request of his own. Roger is pretty sure that you’re dead, but he’s asked Paul to confirm it.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “And now Bannerman knows I’m not.”

  “Paul won’t compromise you. Don’t worry about that. Clew was asking on behalf of Artemus Bourne. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “I’ve seen it in the papers. Worth billions? Big oil?”

  “Big a lot of things,” said Molly. “Bourne thinks you’re still alive, but Roger says he’s not sure. If you are, he wants to meet you; he wouldn’t say why. But he promises to make it worth your while.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “We know of him. We can’t help being impressed. He makes the old robber barons look like bicycle thieves. So Paul wonders what makes you this important to him. The message is that he’ll meet you at a place of your choosing. There’s a hundred thousand dollars in it for you.”

  “But you have no idea what this Bourne wants from me?”

  Molly shook her head. “Nor does Roger. Roger, by the way, has no use for Bourne. He agreed to ask, but only because he got something in exchange. Bourne tipped him on some sort of arms deal.”

  “So it’s all the same to him if I decline?”

  “That’s my take.”

  “Then that’s it,” said Elizabeth. “I’m not interested, Molly.”

  “There’s more to the message. Bourne asked Clew to tell you, ‘He isn’t dead either.’ He told Clew, ‘She’ll know who I mean.’”

  Elizabeth closed her eyes. “I said the answer is no.”

  “Would that ‘he’ be Martin Kessler, by chance?”

  A deep sigh. “Probably.” She glanced down toward the boat. Aisha and Billy were standing in the cockpit, Carla was sitting on the railing. A middle aged woman had come up through the hatch followed by another, very pretty, much younger. The younger one…that would be the angel, she assumed. Wonderful, thought Elizabeth. That’s all Aisha needs. A new friend who thinks she’s been to heaven.

  She said, “Listen, Molly…I want to stay dead. But Bannerman won’t lie to Clew, will he?”

  “No, he won’t lie. But he’ll say that you’re dead as far as Bourne is concerned. He’ll ask Roger to leave it at that.”

  Elizabeth asked, “He won’t tell Clew where I am?”

  Molly shook her head. “Not without your permission. He did say that Roger’s hot to meet you himself if you should turn out to be alive.”

  “Let’s…not open that door, okay Molly?”

  “It’s your call.”

  “I’d be grateful.”

  “Then it’s done,” Molly told her. “So where’s Martin Kessler? Is he here?”

  “Martin’s dead.”

  “As you wish.”

  “No,” she said softly. “In his case it’s real. This was not the first trouble we’ve had on this island. I won’t take the time to go into it now, but we stopped it, Martin mostly, and it cost him his life. Martin’s been dead for two years.”

  Molly and John exchanged curious glances. Elizabeth felt sure that she knew what they were thinking. She said, “No, he did not shoot himself in Romania. He staged it so that both of us could be dead. He showed up back here a few months later.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Waldo. “Let me get this straight. You died on an exercise bike. When was that?”

  “A little more than three years ago.”

  “And the Bucharest hotel thing was when?”

  “Less than a year later. But as I’ve said…”

  “We heard you,” said Waldo. “Bucharest never happened. Fact is, we knew that story was bullshit because too many people saw Kessler after that. Except now you’re saying he’s been dead for two years. He’s been seen since then, too, from what I hear.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Well, tell that to Harry Whistler,” said Waldo. “Harry, or I guess it was one of the twins, spotted Kessler in Switzerland…I don’t know…eighteen months ago. He was walking down the street in Davos dressed like a Davos ski instructor.”

  “A ski instructor?”

  “Red jump suit with badges.”

  Elizabeth made a face. “Next you’ll tell me he spoke to him.”

  “From what I hear, he would have, but he wasn’t sure at first. But then Kessler must have spotted him, too, because he saw Kessler glance over his shoulder as if he knew that the other twin must be near. Only someone who knew them would do that.”

  “And?”

  “That’s it,” said Waldo. “Kessler crossed the street and ducked him. The twin figured he had reasons, so he left them alone.”

  “John…people ‘glance’ when they’re crossing a street. Very few of them are checking for identical twins.” She paused. “Wait a minute. You said ‘them’?”

  “He was with some woman. She had regular ski clothes. She was probably signed up for a lesson.”

  “Attractive?”

  “Hey, Elizabeth…”

  She grimaced. “I’m sorry. Stupid question. Forget it.”

  She had found herself envisioning a beautiful young woman, tailored ski suit,

  splendid body, hugging him as they walked, Martin nuzzling her, grinning, on their way to some hotel room. Look at me, she thought angrily. Getting jealous. It’s insane.

  “It could not have been Martin,” she said firmly.

  Waldo shrugged. “Suit yourself. But that wasn’t the first time.” He turned to Molly. “Where else did we hear?”

  “Tel Aviv, as I recall.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Tel Aviv. That was more like a year ago. We heard he hooked up with the Mossad.”

  “Well, he didn’t.”

  Molly squinted as if she were trying to remember. She said to Waldo, “Some job involving Africa, wasn’t it?”

  “Something like that. Let me think.”

  “And diamonds,” said Molly. “It was something about diamonds.”

  Waldo brightened. “Yeah, diamonds. Him and the Israelis. The Israelis are into a whole lot of things; they don’t spend all their time fighting Arabs. The Israelis are big in the diamond trade lately. West African diamonds. Best in the world. But the Israelis have to smuggle them out because of this boycott that DeBeers, I think, started. The boycott’s on those countries where the rebels mine the diamonds and sell them to buy guns and drugs.”

  Molly shrugged. “Some boycott. It’s not going to work. Once a diamond has been polished and cut, there’s no way to tell where it came from.”

  Waldo said, “That’s my point. Get them out and then cut them. Maybe Kessler’s doing some smuggling for them.”

  “I don’t know,” said Molly. “He’d have to know Africa. I don’t recall that he’d ever been there.”

  “Maybe not,” said Waldo,
“but it’s still about diamonds. Tel Aviv’s already a big cutting center. In five years, they want to be bigger than Antwerp. Anyhow, that’s twice someone saw him.”

  Elizabeth sighed. This was getting ridiculous. First a Swiss ski instructor, then an Israeli agent, and now maybe a smuggler of West African diamonds. Next we’ll hear that he’s in partnership with Elvis. All of this, to Elizabeth, was absurd on its face. She said as much to Molly and Waldo.

  It was she, to begin with, who had worked with the Mossad and someone must have gotten them mixed up. And even if Martin had survived by some miracle, he would never work with the Mossad. He’d always said they’re too tricky, too devious for him, aside from always being too serious. He’d worked with them once, but that was for her and only because she’d been shot. They’d both set out to track down the people who shot her. They both had their own sources; it made sense to work together lest they end up putting holes in each other. In the end, in fact, it was one of Martin’s sources that helped them to recover the Ceausescus’ cache of diamonds.

  Those diamonds, thought Elizabeth. That must be it. Someone had confused an event years ago with some more recent rumor about Martin.

  She said, “Aside from Martin not trusting the Mossad, why would they want to work with Martin Kessler?”

  Molly shrugged. “They did once. You just said so.”

  “They had no choice; they needed each other, but that wasn’t a match made in heaven. I mean, Martin’s father was a senior official in Hitler’s foreign intelligence service. Martin, himself, had been Stasi.”

  “Elizabeth,” said Molly, “they wouldn’t have cared. It’s not as if his father ran Auschwitz. Anyway, Martin hadn’t even been born until after that war had ended.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Add the difference in temperament. The Mossad’s a deliberate, no-nonsense service that thinks in terms of long-range objectives. Martin was nuts. He didn’t think past next week. He would have been nothing but trouble.”

  Elizabeth paused. She raised her fingers to her temples. She remembered what Martin had said to Aisha. “I’m like a bad penny. I’ll keep turning up.” She said, “Damn it, why am I talking about this? Martin’s dead. There’s no question about it.”

  Molly asked her, “You say he died on this island?”

  “Just off it.” She gestured toward the ocean.

  “I guess I have to ask how and when.”

  Elizabeth saw that Aisha and Billy were returning. Aisha waved a farewell to the three still on the boat after shaking each of their hands. As she walked up the dock, she met Elizabeth’s eyes, her head cocked to one side, an odd expression on her face. Aisha couldn’t possibly have heard Martin’s name, but she looked the way she’d look if she had. Elizabeth dismissed the thought as it formed. Perceptiveness is one thing; reading minds is another. Or maybe Whistler’s angel sent a seagull up to listen and the seagull flew back to report. Is that crazy? Why crazy? It would make as much sense as Martin Kessler’s resurrection. Now we even have the Holy Land involved.

  She’d talked about Martin enough for one day. She didn’t need another discussion. On the other hand, she thought, let’s put an end to this subject and not hear about any more sightings.

  She said, “Aisha, come up here and listen to this. I’m going to go through this just one more time and then never talk about it again.”

  She turned to Molly and began telling the story of the terrorists that had come to the island.

  “Aisha’s hearing this,” she said, “because it’s her they came to kill. It was the second attempt on her life here. Aisha’s uncle was behind it; he’d already killed her parents. You don’t need to know why, but that’s the essence.”

  Molly reached to touch Aisha. She whispered, “I’m sorry.” To Elizabeth, she said, “Please go on.”

  “The second attempt was with a nuclear device. It was the warhead from a Russian artillery shell. They only had the warhead, not the trigger mechanism. They couldn’t detonate it, but they could and did leak it. It might have killed every living thing with miles if Martin hadn’t reached it in time.

  Waldo looked at Molly. “Did we know about this?”

  Molly shook her head. “It’s news to me. And if Paul knows, he’s never shared it.”

  Elizabeth explained why it had been suppressed. A special anti-terrorist task force created by the National Security Council had enshrouded the event and its participants. They had done the same thing with several other failed attacks that had no connection with this one. “The policy was to keep them quiet, avert panic, but this was before the 9/11 attack and the so-called war we’re in now.”

  Molly said, “Then I would think that Roger Clew should have known.”

  “Clew sits on the Council?”

  “No, but his boss at the time did,” said Molly. “That was Barton Fuller. He and Roger were close. Fuller surely would have briefed him on this.”

  Elizabeth agreed. “On the big picture, yes, but not about me and Martin. Not about Aisha and some friends of ours either. The man who headed the task force had made a decision to keep all of our names out of this. He knew that if he didn’t, someone else might try for us. That would have put us back where we started and this island might not have been so lucky.”

  “He would have kept your names from Roger?”

  “Unless Roger asked.”

  Molly understood. “And why would he?” she said. “He would not have expected a name that he’d recognize. But how did you get involved in the first place?”

  Elizabeth waved a hand. “Let’s just get to how it ended. Martin had taken a bullet in the belly, but he managed to get to the terrorists’ boat. He’d caught Aisha’s uncle; made the uncle come with him. Martin took the uncle and the yacht out to sea. By the time Martin got them a few miles out, they had all been fatally exposed. Neither one could survive and Martin knew that. With police boats and Coast Guard patrol boats in pursuit, he kept going until he was out of sight of land. He found a reef and ran the boat aground on it.”

  She said, “The Navy was called in. They used divers to surround it with floating booms and helicopters to drop some sort of dome on the boat. Next they pumped a thick foam through that covering. They did that in order to contain the radiation until specialized equipment could arrive the next morning. Until then, they kept their distance, but the boat was surrounded. Martin had sealed himself in the main cabin when they started pumping the foam. He had Aisha’s uncle with him and he gave him a choice between dying hard and dying easy.”

  She said, “The uncle spilled his guts and provided the names of everyone else who was behind this. Martin put him on the radio, made him tell the authorities. Then Martin threw him out. He suffocated in the foam. Having done that, Martin asked to be patched through to me. They couldn’t find me, so he spoke to Aisha and asked her to take care of me. He told her that he was about to sit down, have a drink, put his feet up and relax. He said the bar was well-stocked; no use wasting it.”

  “Sounds like Kessler,” said Waldo. “I remember one time…”

  Molly said, “Hold that thought. Let her finish.”

  “The next morning,” said Elizabeth, “they boarded the boat and cut their way through the hardened foam. They found Aisha’s uncle where Martin had left him. Martin, however, was nowhere to be found.”

  “He swam away,” said Aisha.

  Molly asked, “Um…swam to where?”

  “Well, I know that he couldn’t have swum back to shore. There must have been another boat that picked him up.”

  Molly seemed confused. “While the Coast Guard was watching?”

  “Exactly,” said Elizabeth. “It couldn’t have happened. He did get off the boat, but he went nowhere but down. He had to have left the boat just after dark because the foam, we heard later, would be starting to harden. After sundown, the boat was lit up with floodlights. So he had a period of a half hour, tops, when he could have slipped into the water unseen, but he would have been spotted
if he surfaced. He didn’t surface. He swam underwater with an outgoing tide. He swam until he drowned. The tide took it from there.”

  Molly said, “I still don’t get it. What would have been the point?”

  A sad shrug. “You knew Martin. This was typical Martin. He might have thought that it would make a better comic book.”

  “You think he did this on a lark? With a bullet in his belly?”

  Elizabeth sighed. “Not a lark. Not exactly. Martin didn’t want his body to be found because he’d promised Aisha that he wouldn’t die. And you see where that’s got us. She believes him.”

  “Except what if she’s right? What if someone picked him up?”

  Elizabeth took a breath. “Don’t you start.”

  “But you weren’t there. This is all second hand. Why isn’t it possible that he had some help?”

  “From the Coast Guard? The Navy?”

  “They both obey orders.”

  “And their orders were to entomb that boat and not let anyone near it before morning. He was quarantined, Molly. They did not want him off. They’d measured his exposure at 1,000 rads. They’d confirmed that he couldn’t survive it. Add to that internal bleeding from the bullet he took. Add drowning and he’s dead three different ways.”

  “You still can’t be sure,” said Aisha in a whisper.

  “Honey…you’re not listening. He wanted it that way. He was trying to spare you.”

  “And you?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Then don’t talk as if he was playing some game. If he’s dead, he died bravely. You should honor him, Elizabeth.”

  “She’s just hurting,” said Molly. “She’s still mad at him for dying.”

  John Waldo grunted. “That’s assuming he’d dead.”

  Elizabeth glared. “You’re not listening either.”

  “Yeah, I was. But what’s the harm in you talking to the twins to ask them about that time in Davos? And as for the Mossad, you still have connections. Why wouldn’t you just pick up the phone and ask them what they know about this?”

  “Because that story is ridiculous. And then they’d know I’m still alive.”