The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  A party of some sort? A convention? Perhaps a business meeting. And perhaps, thought Martin Selly, this gathering had something to do with the assignment that Grassi had in mind for them. Or rather assignments. In the plural. Grassi had been clear about that at least. Be patient, he said. Sit tight, he said. You'll have all you can handle. All three of you.

  Behind him, through the screen door, he heard the Algerian. Or rather his automatic weapons. One seldom actually heard Amal. Just the click and slap of those guns he was forever cleaning. You'd think they were women. To Amal, perhaps they were. All those orifices. Hidden parts. Nooks and crannies.

  A delivery van had turned off the coast road. He checked his watch. Late this morning. But welcome nonetheless. Fresh croissants, his copy of the Tribune, and a supply of groceries. A nice Dover sole for lunch. He would bake it himself. Erna, like all Germans, would fry it into shoe leather.

  Martin Selly had begun to lower his glasses when another movement caught his eye. Just below him. The second house down. It was shut for the season, windows sealed with white boards, but someone was there. In the back. By the swimming pool, hidden behind the hedge. Selly slipped from his chair. He stayed low, edging backward toward the screen. He was about to call Amal. Stop playing with your bloody toys. Put them together. Quickly. But then, rising from the hedge, he saw the head and shoulders of a woman.

  She was looking up, but not toward him. It was the delivery van that had caught her attention. Selly heard the splash of water. He saw her turn, fingers to her lips, toward someone still unseen. The splashing stopped. Selly scanned the pool area. Then he saw it. A hiker's backpack. No, two. Stashed in the shadows of the hedge. He relaxed. Now he understood. Trespassers. Sneaking a morning swim, a welcome freshwater bath, in the pool of a shuttered house. The sound of the van, stopping so near, had alarmed one of them. But now it was leaving. Erna had paid for the delivery. He could hear her on the stairs, bringing his newspaper. Quietly, soundlessly, Selly opened the screen and stepped inside. He stood there, watching. Soon he was rewarded.

  A young girl, judging by her figure, was doing a lazy silent backstroke toward the far corner of the pool. The morning sun glistened off her flat stomach and the creamy mounds of her breasts. She reached the corner. She stopped there, arms draped along the tiled edges. Her legs and stomach sank from view but not the breasts. They floated, buoyed by the water. She was smiling now. Seductively. Her tongue working the edges of her lips. Enticing the other hiker to her.

  Another splash. Barely heard. The sound of wading. Ripples spread from its source. More nakedness appeared. A back this time, and a tight little buttocks. She was quite slender. But for the tan lines of a swimsuit's halter she might have been a young boy. She was swimming, toward the other, in a slow, tantalizing breaststroke. The other was smiling. No. It was more than that. An invitation. A seduction. Her lips were parted. Her tongue worked their edges. Now her head fell back. It began a slow, rolling motion as the swimmer drew nearer.

  “Erna,” he whispered.

  She came to his side. He pointed. They watched in silence.

  The swimmer reached her waiting friend. Hands found her waist. Her face, her mouth, found the other's throat. The other gasped. The face, the mouth, the tongue, explored the shoulders of the other, and then the breasts. The other squealed. Now the head reared up. It took a great breath. It sank from sight. Now the other moaned. A deep, throaty sound. It became a scream.

  “Get them,” Martin Selly said hoarsely. “Bring them.”

  “Lesbians? For you?” The German pinched her face. But her own eyes were glistening.

  “The water there is old and dirty. They will want a bath.”

  Erna frowned. The temptation was strong. She had gone longer than the blond Englishman without softness in her life. And the American, Grassi, had not forbidden this. No calls, he said. Stay home, he said, until I need you. But she too had needs. Still, she was doubtful.

  “They will not come,” the prostitute said. “Not now. Drugs will not bring them. They want only each other.”

  “They are trespassers,” he reminded her. “Take Amal with you. Say that we own that house and that you have brought a policeman. Let them see a gun on his belt. Say we intend only to question them, search their belongings in case they have stolen from us, and then they will be free to leave Marbella.”

  “But you must let them leave,” she warned. “This place is too small. They would be found, and Grassi would know.”

  “Get them,” he said through his teeth.

  By the time Ronny Grassi had settled his bar bill it was nearly three in the morning. He had not returned to his boat. Better, he'd decided, to stay at the Puente Romano. Less likely to miss anything. The decision had probably saved his life. For aboard Temptress, a sixty-foot trawler of teak and chrome, B. J. Tucker was waiting for him.

  The first mate, who had stitched and cauterized his ear and splinted his thumb, lay unconscious on the deck of his cabin, slowly suffocating, his windpipe crushed by a forearm blow seconds after Tucker had risen to see the results in a mirror.

  There were no other crew on board, save the ship's cook. They were on shore leave, prowling the brothels of Malaga. Only a single guard had been posted and he had stationed himself at the foot of the wharf. Grassi had underestimated him. He would pay for it.

  Tucker tried the door to the crew's quarters. It was locked. But he could hear the cook snoring loudly. The cook would keep. Tucker found the gun locker. He pried it open and smiled. There were two assault rifles, M-16s, two TEC-9 machine pistols, an M-203 grenade launcher, and a drum-loaded automatic shotgun meant for sweeping the deck of an unfriendly vessel. He chose one of the machine pistols, studied its workings, then took two magazines, each containing thirty-six rounds. He inserted one of these and fed the chamber. He put the other in his belt. Moving quietly, he stepped from the storage cabin and climbed to the main salon where he found a bottle of vodka that would ease the throbbing where his ear had been and the pain of his ruined hand. With the vodka under his arm, he climbed on to the flying bridge. From it, twenty feet above the dock, he could see the entire waterfront of Puerto Banus. And the access road where Grassi's car must enter. He sat heavily into a swivel chair and turned it in that direction.

  He had no plan worth the name. First Grassi, hear him beg, hurt him first, take his money, his rings, then find that crazy fuck who ate his ear. After that ... he didn't know. Ireland, maybe. The IRA. Or South Africa. Fight the niggers. Maybe play some rugby.

  He was aware, at some level, that shooting makes noise. That there were many more guns in Marbella than his. That he could not kill two men . . . make that three . . . don't forget that faggot Bannerman . . . thinks he's king shit . . . called him stupid . . . and then just hail a cab out of town. But when he tried to consider things, to think clearly, all he could hear was laughter. He brought the vodka to his lips. He drank deeply, choked, then drank again.

  They'd laughed at him. And they threw him a rag. Told him to get lost. Like he was nothing. He'd show them who was nothing.

  He waited.

  Drinking from his bottle. Nodding. Fighting sleep. Around him, lights blinked off. Waves lapped at the boat. His chin fell to his chest. He slept.

  It seemed only moments later, although hours had passed, that he felt the sun hot on his legs and a hand on his shoulder.

  He fired without looking.

  She had spotted her father at once. He stood waiting, one arm raised, just beyond the glass immigration booth at Zurich's airport. Beside him, dwarfed by him, was the small, elegant woman who had so captivated him, and who, not a month before, had helped to save her life.

  Elena stood, erect, chin high, cloaked in fur, both arms in slings that crossed her breast, the fingers of one hand clutching the sleeve of her father's coat, her expression at once eager and anxious, her father touching those fingers as if to reassure her.

  There was no need. Susan's grin, first of recognition and then of p
leasure, washed away any apprehension that Elena might have felt even before Susan reached her. They stood together, saying little, touching cheeks.

  At last her father took her aside. She, he told her, would be taken to Elena's house. He and Elena, and Elena's uncle, had to take a short trip. They would be back, perhaps that day. Certainly the next. She would stay in Zurich. The Bruggs would take care of her. Susan gripped his necktie, pretending to straighten it.

  “In a pig's ass,” she said sweetly.

  Her father shot a helpless glance toward Elena, who, her expression smug, was examining the ceiling. Susan guessed that there had been a wager. Her father had lost.

  Within twenty minutes she was being helped aboard a Gulfstream jet by two young men, both named Brugg, who stared first at her and then at her father, then met each other's eyes with expressions that seemed to remark on the perversity of genetics. Susan was used to it. She answered with a pleasant shrug.

  Inside the aircraft, strapped into a leather seat, a robe covering legs too small for the rest of him, was an equally elegant and bearded older man whose expression, directed at her father, was equally smug. Her father could only grumble.

  They would land in Malaga, Urs Brugg explained, within two hours. From there, a short ride by helicopter to Marbella. Yes, Paul Bannerman is there. Yes, he is well. No, most assuredly, he is in no danger. Yes, he is expecting them, although not Susan, but none of them, especially herself, should expect to be welcomed with great enthusiasm. Yes, his purpose there is as she thought. She must not interfere. She was silent for several minutes. In the end, she gave her word.

  Two hours flight time. Enough to ask and answer many questions. Susan answered those she could, about Westport and the events that led to her departure. Then the conversations turned private. She sat first with Elena. They spoke in whispers that were punctuated by grins. A few times, they laughed aloud. Lesko's ears began to bum.

  The copilot served a light breakfast. Susan took it with Urs Brugg, at his request. He gestured toward the rear of the plane where her father now sat with his niece. He asked Susan if she approved. She hardly knew how to answer. She had never before seen her father with a woman other than her mother. She had never seen any woman, including her mother but excepting herself, regard him with such obvious affection and respect. She certainly liked Elena, she said, and she was glad for her father, the difference in their backgrounds notwithstanding. It was no greater than that between herself and Paul. Time would tell.

  She asked what they would do, whether Elena would return to New York with him. Urs Brugg seemed to avoid the subject. Perhaps, she supposed, he did not know. He asked that, on arriving in Marbella, she stay close to her father, keep him out of trouble. This trip, he said, was an indulgence. Nothing more. He began to say that there were more important things her father should be doing but he stopped himself. Abruptly, she thought, he began pointing out the sights below. The harbor of Marseilles. Ahead, the coast of Spain. But she had heard him.

  At the airport outside Malaga, two Bell Jet Ranger helicopters awaited them. The younger Bruggs took one, the rest of the party took the second. It seemed no more than minutes before the first settled down on a concrete pad at a place where a white man-made breakwater said “Roman Bridge” in Spanish. Susan's aircraft hovered above the gentle surf as the younger Bruggs, their hands concealed within raincoats, stepped away from their helicopter and awaited the approach of two other men, one thickset, dressed in a blazer and white slacks, the other slight and balding, dressed in a floral-print shirt, shorts, and sandals.

  “The bigger man is Ronny Grassi.” Urs Brugg spoke above the noise of the rotors. “He is a friend. The man smoking a pipe is Colonel Leonid Belkin. He is KGB, stationed in Switzerland. Also a friend.”

  “KGB?” Susan's eyes widened. “As in Russian?”

  Urs Brugg smiled. “As you see, he does not have horns.”

  “But why is he here? Does Paul know him?”

  “He is strictly an observer. He knows of Paul but they have not met. He is an admirer. Do not be concerned.”

  Susan could see other men. And a few women. Perhaps twenty in all, spread out along the beach. They seemed, at first glance, to be strollers and sunbathers. But then she noticed. None were looking in their direction. They were looking away. Toward the east, the west, and the trees and buildings to the north. As if whatever might come from those directions was of considerably more interest than the arrival of two helicopters.

  “Those people down there,” she asked quietly, “are they friends as well?”

  He smiled. “You have a good eye, Miss Lesko.”

  The helicopter banked. The other was lifting off. Urs Brugg leaned closer to her.

  “You know, I take it, what Paul Bannerman does,” he said. “May I ask how you feel about it?”

  ”I wish,” she said slowly, “that he were just a travel agent. But of course he isn't. Is he?”

  “No. He is much more.”

  “And I know, although I'm not sure I've really grasped it yet, that he's here to execute three people who murdered your nephew.”

  “But then so is your father. The only distinction being that your father will not be given the chance.”

  ”I know that, too. I know that they're alike.”

  “Would you try to change them?” Urs Brugg asked.

  ”I would try ... to protect them.”

  “Miss Lesko”—Urs Brugg turned in his seat—“before you return home, could we have a talk? Just you and me?”

  “About Paul?”

  “In large part. Yes.”

  “In this talk,” she asked, “will you tell me what you want from him?”

  “That and other subjects. I think so. Yes.”

  “What else will we talk about, Mr. Brugg?”

  “About the world we live in, Miss Lesko.”

  Ronny Grassi had waved off all introductions until Urs Brugg could be carried across the sand in his wheelchair and the group had safely reached a restaurant table in the open courtyard of the Puente Romano.

  Around them, Susan saw, were more men and women. Some at other tables, some strolling about. Nearly all with their backs to them. Her father had noticed as well. She'd seen his hand brush over the bulge at his hip as he seated Elena. He remained standing behind her. But neither Grassi nor the bookish little man who was a KGB colonel seemed concerned by their presence.

  Grassi seemed more interested in her father. He kept looking at him, his brow knitted, as if he were trying to place him.

  “We had a little trouble here,” Grassi said. He shot a meaningful glance at the people nearby, acknowledging for the first time that they'd been posted there. “My fault, maybe. Guy on my boat went berserk, shot my cook and nearly killed my first mate and a guard. We have people out looking for him. Better we stay close to home until they find him.”

  “I'm Susan Lesko.” She extended her hand. “Does this trouble involve Paul Bannerman?”

  “Lesko.” He repeated the name. He looked once more at the man who hovered close to Elena Brugg. “You're not . . . you from New York? From the cops?”

  “Used to be,” he answered. “Retired. This is my daughter. What about Bannerman?”

  Grassì answered but he was looking at Urs brugg. “So far,” he said, “the only thing Bannerman's involved in is ruining the hotel's business. This morning he makes the rounds of the breakfast tables and next thing you know half his old friends are heading for the airport.” He turned back to Lesko. “Detectives, right? Raymond the Terrible. I’m from New York myself.”

  The KGB man looked up, his expression showing new interest.

  “Small world,” Lesko said indifferently. But to show Elena that he had manners, he extended his hand.

  “Ronny Grassi.” The other man gripped it. “Used to live in Brooklyn. Ocean Parkway. We had a mutual friend. You know Irwin Kaplan?”

  ”DEA.” Lesko nodded, one eyebrow rising. “How do you know Irwin?”

 
; “He grew up down the street. We kept in touch. We've done each other a favor here and there. You talk to him, tell him Ronny Grassi says hello.”

  Lesko relaxed a notch. Grassi was telling him that he was okay. Probably set up a drug bust or two for Kaplan. You have any doubts, call him. Lesko just might do that, he thought.

  “Where is Paul?” Susan interrupted. Reunions are nice, but ... “Is he here now?”

  “Last I saw, he was up on his deck.” Grassi pointed, but then thought better of it. “You better stay here though. He'll be along.”

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  Grassi watched her go.

  “Your daughter, huh?” he said, almost doubtfully.

  “Life's full of surprises.” Lesko scowled.

  But he wished she hadn't gone. He wished that he had not chosen between Susan and Elena. But he knew that he had.