The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  “Tell you what,” Billy said. “We'll go home, and me and Johnny Waldo will disappear for a week or two. Time we get back, you won't have to worry about Reid no more/’

  ”I don't think so, Billy. Not yet.”

  “The more we wait, the more he's got the edge.”

  ”I know.”

  “Especially,” the bigger man said, “someone's got to pay for Doc Russo. Even if it's the wrong guy. You can't let anyone hit you without you hit back. Otherwise, word gets around.”

  Bannerman understood that. The Carmodys were a start but they would not be enough. Certainly not for Carla. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Billy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there anything about this that just doesn't feel right to you?”

  “Like what?”

  ”I don't know.” They had entered the parking garage. “Roger Clew is on his way over here. Why?”

  “To help out, right? Wasn't it him who sprung Carla and the Doc?”

  “Probably,” Bannerman acknowledged. “But all that took was a call or two. Any other time we've needed Roger's clout, the best thing he could do for us was to stick close to his phone. Why, this one time, would he feel the need to come to Switzerland?”

  “The other times weren't personal. They didn't mess up your head.”

  Bannerman closed one eye. “You're saying he came to save me from myself.”

  “Don't knock it. So did me and Molly.” He found a parking space in the section reserved for Eurocar rentals. “You know what I think is different here?”

  Bannerman waited.

  “The girl back there. Susan.” He jerked a thumb in the general direction of Davos. “She's got you thinking too much. It's the one bad thing about liking women.”

  ”I suppose.”

  “Take my word.”

  Bannerman had to smile.

  “On Reid too,” Billy said firmly. “It's him.”

  “Or somebody wants us to think so.”

  ”I know.’* Billy shook his head. “Things aren't always what they seem. But you want to know something else? Most times they are.”

  “Let's just get home, Billy.” Bannerman opened his door.

  He had not booked a flight. Better not to announce their intentions. Getting seats on a weekday would not be difficult. Bannerman's more immediate concern was to get through a crowded airline terminal without being shot. Elena's car had been hit on a main highway in broad daylight. Anyone that desperate might not hesitate to shoot up the line at the Swissair check-in counter, especially knowing that the two of them were sure to have discarded their weapons. Bannerman's next concern would be getting through passport control without being detained by the Swiss police. They'd have identified Russo's body by now and connected Russo with him. Urs Brugg had warned him of that. He promised to distract them if he could but he urged Bannerman to waste no time leaving Switzerland. Bannerman would try to call him from the boarding gate. Ask about Elena. See if she's out of surgery. And he'd call Molly. To ask about Susan. And to tell Molly that he'd changed his mind. She should get home as well.

  They entered the terminal, each with a ski bag and boot bag. Just two more skiers. Best way to pass unnoticed through a Swiss airport in January.

  Dropping the car keys on the Eurocar desk, they proceeded to the Swissair counter. Bannerman paid for their tickets with a credit card, checked their bags, and moved directly to passport control. The official there, in his glass booth, examined their passports then stared at each of them with more than passing interest but he made no move to check their names against the computerized stop list in front of him. Now the official's eyes flicked past Bannerman's shoulder. Bannerman saw a tiny nod. He turned, his stomach tightening. He saw a man, thirty paces away, dressed in a leather topcoat, his arms folded. He glanced around the terminal. Two more men, one on either side, stood facing him. He looked back at the man in the leather coat. The man touched a finger to the brim of his hat, smiled briefly, and turned away. It was Willem Brugg.

  In an eighteenth-century villa overlooking the lights of Zurich, Urs Brugg winced as his chess opponent pounced on a bishop whose bad intentions Brugg hoped he had disguised.

  He was man of middle size, made to seem larger by a broad chest and powerful arms and shoulders, which for twenty years had done the work of legs. A thick Hemingway beard added to the impression of mass. The beard and his hair, worn in a near crew cut, were the color of steel wool. His face was unlined, except at the edges of his mouth and around his intelligent blue eyes, where deeply etched creases gave him a look of sustained amusement.

  The room in which he spent much of his existence had been a ballroom in another age. The ceiling, blue in the daytime with painted clouds, became a twinkling night sky at sunset, lit by scores of tiny bulbs. The walls were hung with art, all of it light and summery. Outdoor scenes. A mountainscape done by his niece had recently displaced a Monet a thousand times its value although not as prized. The centerpiece of the room, other than Urs Brugg's desk, was an astonishing Turkish carpet, all silk, 2,000 knots to the inch, forty feet in length. It was set on a parquet floor with ample room around it for the passage of his wheelchair. At each end of the room, matching screens of carved Swiss oak concealed the otherwise jarring notes of an electrically adjustable bed and a small gymnasium of weights and pulleys. His desk was in the center. Behind him, French doors opened onto a stone balcony that ran the length of the room. On it, covered now with plastic tents, were many flower boxes whose cultivation was among his hobbies. It was there that he took his midday meal in all but the most inclement weather.

  At the left side of his desk, as he sat, was an antique armoire that concealed an elaborate communications center that included two computer consoles, a telefax machine and telex printer, and a voice-activated telephone system that remembered hundreds of unlisted numbers.

  The chessboard was to his right. His opponent, a smaller, balding man with the dress and manner of a rumpled academic, pondered his next several moves while absently signaling, with the stem of his pipe, that the light on Urs Brugg's private line was flashing. Urs Brugg spun his chair and picked up the phone.

  “Yes, Paul/’ A short nod to the other man, then he grunted dismissively as Paul Bannerman thanked him for the protection provided by his nephew and for the apparent influence that had been applied on the man at passport control. Urs Brugg gestured toward his opponent and held out a hand for the folder he had brought. The other man pushed it across the desk. Urs Brugg opened it to a photograph of Paul Bannerman, grainy, much enlarged, not recent. His opponent reached to select a second photo, one of several. “McHugh,” he mouthed. “The man with him.”

  Urs Brugg shrugged. His interest in the second man, the brutish one, was limited to his capacity to protect Paul Bannerman. From his appearance, he seemed adequate to the task.

  “Yes, Willem called as soon as you were safely past our friend at the booth,” he said into the telephone. “You are leaving none too soon. The police think they have the lot of you contained in Davos. They have set up roadblocks.”

  He listened, hearing no concern in Bannerman's response. He studied the photograph. An interesting face. Curiously gentle. He set it down as Bannerman asked about his niece.

  “She is still in surgery. The damage is extensive. And your Susan?”

  “I'm about to call,” Bannerman told him.

  “Please keep me informed.”

  ”I will, sir.”

  “Today,” said Urs Brugg, ”I have put a price on the men who shot Elena and killed Josef. If Mama's Boy finds them first, will he give them to me?”

  “Mr. Brugg, I would prefer to be called by my name.”

  “Forgive me. Mr. Bannerman, then.”

  “Paul is fine. In any case, those men are only shooters. They're a dime a dozen in Europe. I'll try to do better than that.”

  “It is...as we discussed, I take it.”

  I’m not sure. I hope to be. Very soon.”
/>   “And if you are not?”

  Bannerman hesitated.

  “You will act nonetheless.” Urs Brugg answered for him. “Do others know this about you?”

  “Sir?”

  “That no assault on you can go unpunished. That an immediate response must be presumed, regardless of any remaining doubt. If others know this about you, Paul, you become predictable. You can be manipulated. You have considered this?”

  “The problem with that,” he answered, “is that doubt can be manipulated as well.”

  Urs Brugg understood. Doubt, successfully nourished, can lead to inaction, even misdirected action. He sighed audibly.

  “How wearying it must be,” he said, “to be Paul Banner-man.”

  “Sometimes. Yes.”

  “Safe home, Paul.”

  “I'll be in touch.”

  Urs Brugg broke the connection. His opponent reached to retrieve the file he had brought. “An interesting man,” he said softly, returning his attention to the chessboard.

  “Leo,” Urs Brugg said firmly, ”I have your word.”

  The other man nodded. “You have lost a bishop,” said the KGB station chief from the Soviet Embassy in Bern. “But perhaps, today, you have gained a knight.”

  Molly Farrell took his call in Helge's cubicle.

  “She goes in and out,” Molly told him. “Dozing a lot, having bad dreams. The doctor says that will go on for a while, occasional hallucinations, some memory loss, but he thinks she'll be okay.”

  “Has she . . .”

  “Asked about you? Some.”

  “How much has her father told her?”

  “The basics,” she answered. “Not that he knows all that much. He did say that no matter whose side you were on, you're still a killer. Then Susan asked him how that made you different from him. Not a bad question.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “Same thing you've been saying. She can't live in your world and you can't live in hers. She told him she loved him but he should fuck off.”

  “Susan said that?”

  “And you too.”

  He let out a breath. “Try to make her understand that . . .”

  “Paul,” Molly said gently, “don't push.”

  “Yeah.” A long pause. “How is Lesko behaving otherwise?”

  “He's calming down. He's ... did you know he still talks to his partner?”

  “What partner?”

  “The dead one. When he thinks no one is looking. Susan says it's just force of habit from ten years of working together.”

  “He's not . . .”

  “Wacko? I don't think so. More like lonely. By the way,” she glanced back up the corridor, “he's signaling me right now to see if you have any news about Elena.”

  Bannerman told her what Urs Brugg had said. He gave her the name of the hospital in Zurich. Molly nodded toward Lesko and held up her thumb. Lesko turned away so that she could not see his face.

  “Roger Clew,” she told Bannerman, “called an hour ago from the airport. He's on his way. You must have passed each other on the road.”

  “Did you tell him I'm leaving?”

  ”I just said you weren't here.”

  “Don't tell him. Don't lie to him either. Let him draw his own conclusions but I'll want to know what sort of questions he asks. Tell him I'd like him to make arrangements to get Susan and her father out of Switzerland as soon as she can travel. Is Lesko's passport legitimate?”

  “He didn't have one. The one we gave him is okay but not great. Short notice.”

  “Then Lesko will need Roger. Bring them both to Westport where we can protect them until this is settled.”

  “Susan will come. She's not through with you. If she does, so will he. He's not through with you either.”

  “Fair enough. Until then, get Roger to arrange for more security around that hospital.”

  “No need,” she told him. “There are six men outside with automatic weapons. They're paratroopers, off duty. Their major came in to introduce himself. They're with the Enzian Unit out of Zurich.”

  Enzian Unit. Swiss commandos. Bannerman was impressed. “Roger works fast.”

  “Not Roger. Your new friend. Urs Brugg.”

  He was doubly impressed. He remembered the awe on Helge's face when she first told him that Urs Brugg was on her telephone. There was more to this man than money after all. “Well,” he said, “in that case, wait for Roger and then get home. I might have a job for you.”

  ”I thought you might.”

  Exhausted, Bannerman was asleep before the clouds blurred out the lights of Zurich. The Swissair flight took him only to Geneva where, to confuse possible surveillance, he and Billy boarded a Delta flight to Montreal. There they connected with a Finnair flight that was on its final leg from Helsinki to New York. They arrived at five in the morning. They'd been traveling fourteen hours.

  At JFK Airport, they passed through customs without incident. Beyond, a knot of about a dozen people, several of them yawning, waited for arriving passengers. A number of limo drivers were among them. One of these, short, white haired, a sour expression, wearing a chauffeur's cap and a raincoat, held a sign with Bannerman's name on it. He recognized John Waldo. Against the far wall, he spotted the Jewish Afro hairdo and beaded denim jacket favored by Janet Herzog. She was sitting on the marble floor, hugging a knitting bag to her chest, apparently dozing. She could have been a college student traveling on winter break although he knew her to be almost his age. He also knew her to be wide awake. She would not move or be seen to look up until they were safely on their way. The knitting bag would contain an Ingram machine pistol. John Waldo's raincoat probably concealed a shotgun.

  Bannerman checked his watch. Nearly noon, Zurich time. He wanted to make one more call. As Billy pushed their luggage cart toward the stretch limo waiting at curbside, Bannerman stepped to a bank of phones and, using a credit card, once more punched out the number of Urs Brugg.

  “My niece is out of danger,” the familiar bass voice boomed back at him. Drained of worry, it sounded younger, fresher. “One bullet shattered her collarbone but it missed the lung. Her left arm has been reassembled with the aid of screws and clamps. She may or may not regain full use of it, yet she is in good spirits. Her primary concern seems to be the scars and how they will affect her choice of wardrobe.”

  “That's the best possible news, sir.”

  “Easy for you to say. You do not wear low cut gowns.”

  Bannerman smiled at the joke and at the relief that it implied. “Mr. Brugg, I regret that I did not get the chance to know her better. She sounds like a very considerable woman.”

  “Yes. Yes, she is.”

  “Susan is also recovering nicely. I hope to get her home in the next few days.”

  “That is done,” Urs Brugg told him. “They leave tonight by way of Munich. Your man from the State Department has arranged transport by military aircraft. She is well guarded. An army doctor will fly with her. She has agreed to accept your protection in Westport. The father disdains it but I think he will follow.”

  The smile remained, although it twisted a bit. “Mr. Brugg, I seem to be having trouble keeping up with you.”

  ”I have my turf, as they say. You have yours.”

  “Which brings me to the other reason for my call. I made you a promise. Can you stay close to your phone this week?”

  ”I am always here. I am in a wheelchair. You have, I gather, made a decision?”

  “Just about.”

  “Have you slept?”

  “On the plane, yes.”

  “You have had two days with very little rest. Get more sleep. Then decide.”

  ”I will. Mr. Brugg, I need two favors.”

  “Ask them.”

  “Dr. Russo's body. He ought to be buried where his friends are. If you could somehow get it released . . .”

  “Give me an address.”

  “Thank you.” Bannerman named a mortician in Westport.
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  “The second favor?”

  “The telephone receptionist at Davos Hospital. Her name is Helge Guler. She's been most helpful and very kind but would not accept a reward. However, she is very much an admirer of Urs Brugg and I thought if you might . . .”

  “Perhaps she would join me here for dinner.”

  “That's more than I would have asked. Thank you.”

  “Paul . . . this Lesko.” Urs Brugg lowered his voice, signaling a topic of an equally personal nature. “He is not, I gather, an especially handsome man.”