The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  “Paul?” he asked over his shoulder. “We lose any?”

  “No.”

  “You're sure? Any sign of—”

  “Three towels,” Bannerman answered tersely. “Stay quiet, Billy. Try to sleep.”

  “Carla and—”

  “They're fine, Billy. Show's over.”

  Billy nodded, satisfied. “Grassi.” He closed one eye, remembering, a smile tugging at his mouth. “He got shot in the ass, didn't he.”

  “He'll live.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Billy—not now.”

  “It's his fault. Him and his games. If that dumb shit football player didn't pop him first, I would've before we left.”

  “Billy—”

  “Or you would've.”

  A sharp intake of breath. “Billy—Susan's back here with me.”

  “Lesko?”

  He heard Katz's voice over the slap of the rotors. He was no longer in the mood.

  “David—Leave me alone. ”

  “Just listen for once, okay?”

  “No. Go away.”

  “Lesko, I saw. You did good.

  “Bullshit.”

  ”Bannerman’s still alive. So’s his gorilla. Nobody got hurt that bad except the redneck who was dead one way or another anyway. You did good.”

  “You saw how Susan looked at me?”

  “What about it?”

  “What about it? She sees her father blow a man's face off and she sees me shoot her boyfriend. What do you think, she grew up seeing me do this around the house?”

  ”I would’ve done it. Shot Bannerman, I mean.”

  “You would have yelled first. I didn't. Maybe I—I don't know—maybe I wanted him dead. Out of Susan's life.”

  “Will you stop?”

  “Stop what? Maybe it's true?”

  “Lesko”—Katz shifted in the seat next to him—“Anything involving your daughter, you wouldn't know the truth if it bit you on your pecker. I have to draw you a picture?”

  “Just leave me alone.”

  “You're at this hotel right? No regular guests. Most of the staff sent home except the ones in Grassi's pocket. Otherwise, nothing but pros. Old pros. The kind who stayed alive because they don't wait to yell warnings. ”

  Katz had a hand on his arm. Lesko tried to pull away.

  “Listen to me.’9 The hand gripped him. “Bannerman knows this. He knows none of his friends—only his enemies— would run up behind him without letting him know they're coming. So he hears a noise, his instinct says turn and shoot. The guy's on autopilot. By the time he sees it's Susan, maybe it's too late. ”

  Lesko squeezed his eyes shut. It had been so close.

  “You did good. You also impressed a lot of people. Two great shots. ”

  “David, ” Lesko said patiently, ”I aimed at Bannerman's head. Any lower and I hit Susan myself. It was luck I got his arm.”

  “So? One great, one lucky.”

  ”I aimed for Tucker's head, too. I got his jaw. And a piece of Billy.”

  “You want some advice? Shut up about luck. Let people think what they want.”

  He did not answer.

  “Lesko?”

  He felt the hand on his arm. Squeezing it.

  Wait a second.

  Since when does Katz touch him?

  “Lesko?”

  He blinked. Elena's voice. Her hand.

  “Yeah?” He straightened. “Sorry—what?”

  “Do you understand what I've said?” she asked, gently.

  “Ah—what part?”

  “That Uncle Urs is right. You did well. You were very brave. And that, concerning Mr. Bannerman, you had no choice.”

  “That was you? Just now?” He waved a hand as if to erase the question. “Never mind,” he said, embarrassed.

  She eyed him curiously, but withheld comment. “What is important is that you believe it.”

  “I'm more interested in what Susan believes,” he said, gathering himself. “Maybe you could call her. Talk to her.”

  ”I think Mr. Bannerman will do that.”

  “Square me with Susan? Fat chance.”

  She squeezed his hand, reassuringly. “May I rest against your shoulder?” she asked.

  “You want a pillow? I could get you a pillow.”

  A deep sigh. She lifted his arm and, to the extent she was able, raised it over her head. She nestled against him. “No, Lesko,” she said. ”I do not want a pillow.”

  He allowed his arm to embrace her, but he kept its weight from settling. He was barely touching her.

  “Am I made of spun glass, Lesko?”

  “Sorry.” He eased it down, finding the warmth of her arm. She closed her eyes.

  “David?”

  No answer.

  “Were you here?”

  Still nothing. Just as well. All in his head. Has to stop anyway. While Elena still thinks he's sane.

  ”A pillow?”

  Oh, Christ.

  “Lady wants your body, so you'd give her a fucking pillow?”

  “David—”

  “You're hopeless, Lesko. You know that?”

  “I know.”

  . . . I know.

  Susan had barely spoken to him. Nor he to her.

  She had asked about his arm, how badly it was hurting him. He made little of it, saying hardly at all, but she knew better.

  The right arm was broken, although not shattered. The bullet had entered at a shallow angle, just below his elbow, and drilled, toward his wrist, through several inches of muscle.

  Like Urs Brugg's, it had passed through. Like Billy's, it had been roughly stitched. She had watched as two men held him still and the Israeli straightened the bone. She flushed the wound with vodka, then sewed it shut using what looked like an upholstery needle and dental floss. Susan would not turn away. She refused to let him see her do that. Only when the arm was splinted and wrapped did she leave, to get ice from the bar in a plastic bag. She went with him to the helicopter, boarded with him. He did not resist. Nor did he welcome her. She sat with him, strapped him in, and carefully placed the ice on his arm.

  Billy, when he realized she was there, greeted her and was kind to her. He did not blame her. “Grassi's fault,” he repeated. He did not explain what the man she'd seen shot had done, or why he, or Paul, might have popped him for it themselves. She tried to believe that popped meant the same as punch. But she knew that it probably did not.

  Nor did he blame her father. Billy had asked—insisted— that he fire. Whatever the risk. “Somebody had to, ” he said. “No one else would. It was his own fault, ” he said, “that he did not duck away from the point of your father's aim. ” But a wounding shot from her father was better than a killing shot from the gun pressed against his neck.

  Susan did not believe him. No one could calmly accept a bullet. He was being kind again. But it was not, she agreed, her father's fault. Nor was it Grassi's. It was her fault. All of it.

  Paul had told her to stay. She couldn't. She didn't.

  But she would not have interfered. Or cried out. And she'd kicked of her shoes, as Paul had, to move without sound. She saw Billy and the man who held him. She saw the man shoot. She saw Paul, moving silently, creeping toward him from the rear. She was about to watch him kill a man. It must have dizzied her. She grabbed for a branch. That damned branch.

  He pivoted toward the noise. He would have seen it was her. He wouldn't have fired. But her father shot him. Her damned father.

  And his damned daughter.

  “Paul, I'm so sorry,” she said.

  “It's okay,” he answered distantly. He did not look at her.

  She sat in silence.

  “Susan?” Billy's voice. “Come here a minute. Sit with me.”

  She hesitated. But Leo Belkin was rising. She unfastened her belt. Bannerman said nothing. He seemed relieved.

  “No. You rest,” the woman named Tovah insisted.

  Urs Brugg shook his head. “The wound is tr
ivial,” he said. ”I wish to speak with Mr. Lesko.”

  Lesko had already risen and squeezed past Elena. He stood in the aisle, frowning. His expression said that he sided with the Israeli.

  “Five minutes,” Urs Brugg said. “Then I will rest.”

  “Two minutes,” said the Israeli. “No more.”

  Lesko waited as the former medic gave up her seat. He eased himself down next to Elena's uncle.

  ”1 have been eavesdropping,” said the older man. Eiena is quite right. Kindly waste no more time in self-reproach.”

  “How're you feeling?” he asked.

  “Of all concerned, including Elena, my wound is the least serious. We will say no more about that either.”

  “No chest wound is not serious.”

  Brugg glared at him through hooded eyes.

  “Okay.” Lesko surrendered. ”I did great. What else can I do for you?”

  “What we discussed in Zurich. You have not changed your mind?”

  Lesko shrugged vaguely.

  “If I am incapacitated, Mr. Lesko, I will need you more than ever. Elena needs you in any case.”

  “I'll have to go home,” he said. “Take care of a few things. But I'll be back.”

  “And you'll stay?”

  “I'll stay.” For a while.

  “In that case, your consultancy began yesterday. Young Willem will open an account for you. Whatever you need, it is yours. Mr. Grassi will provide names and addresses, warehouses, laboratories”—Urs Brugg winced—“enough to make a beginning.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “It's nothing. Yes.”

  “Two minutes is up. Get some rest.”

  Billy McHugh made a calming gesture with his good arm.

  “You got nothing to be sorry about,” he told Susan, softly. “The problem's with him, not you.”

  She shook her head. “If I hadn't—”

  “What happened there”—he stopped her—“is that something went a little wrong. Something always goes wrong. Most times, we handle it. This went wrong three different ways before you ever came up that path.” He held up three fingers. “Grassi played games, I didn't finish the guy last night, I didn't go for him this morning when I had the chance.”

  ”I got Paul shot. You didn't. I probably got you shot as well.”

  Billy ignored the reference to himself. They'd covered that. “He doesn't care about the arm. Three, four months, it's good as new.”

  ”I really don't think he's enjoying it, Billy.”

  He made a gesture of dismissal. “All he cares about, he almost shot you. He would have. Your father saved your life.”

  She drew back from him, doubtfully.

  ”I would have shot you too, Susan. It's true. It happens that quick sometimes. Sometimes even on purpose.”

  She didn't understand.

  “We go on a mission,” he explained, “the idea is to do the job and not take any losses we can help. Those two things come first. We try to be neat, but people get hurt now and then. People in the wrong place, wrong time. Maybe all they're doing is walking their dog. Or they happen to be looking out a window. Sometimes it's us or them. We try not to hurt them but . . .” His voice trailed off.

  She waited.

  “Molly—she told me once you ought to know this. She wouldn't say it herself because—she likes you, you like her. She wouldn't want that to change.”

  “And Paul?”

  “Same thing. Yeah.”

  ”I understand. I guess.” No witnesses. My God.

  “It takes time,” he told her. “Another thing, Molly's going to be real proud of you when she hears you held up this good. Most would've fell apart. You're your father's daughter, for sure.”

  She started to speak. He saw anger in her. He slapped her knee.

  “Next thing,” he said. “Don't get down on your father. Switch places, him and Paul, and Paul would've shot him just as fast. Except Paul wouldn't have hit no arm.”

  She dropped her eyes. “He claims he's a bad shot.”

  “At targets”—Billy waggled his hand—”so-so. At people with guns, he's better. Thing is, he's glad your father nailed him. For your sake and for his. We get to Lisbon, you call your father. Tell him that.”

  “Billy? Why are you doing this? Being so nice to me.”

  “What's not to be nice?”

  ”I would have thought—that you'd just want me to disappear. Get out of Paul's life.”

  “That what you want?”

  “I'm not sure I'm going to have a choice. I think he'll send me away.”

  “He can't now. He's stuck with you.”

  “Because I know so much.”

  Billy shook his head. “Because other people think you do.”

  She understood. She supposed. Truth be told, she really didn't know all that much about Westport. Certainly less than her father. And probably the Bruggs. And probably the fifty or so men and women who'd showed up in Marbella just because Paul was in town. There was a lot more to learn. If she wanted to learn it.

  “Will you teach me?” she asked.

  “Teach you what?”

  “How to be useful. How not to make mistakes.”

  “I'll talk to Paul. But I think we better, yeah.”

  -30-

  The bone splinter, barely longer than a thumbnail, had been driven nearly through the muscles of Urs Brugg's chest. During the flight to Malaga, it caused him pain.

  But on landing, when he raised himself into his wheelchair and the muscles of his powerful upper body flexed and then relaxed the pain went away. Tovah, the Israeli, said that he must not use his strength. Flexing opens wounds. It causes new bleeding. It causes fragments to move.

  He paid no attention. The bullet had bounced off him. There were no fragments. And a bleeding wound, a draining wound, hurts less and is less likely to become infected than one that is closed. That aside, it felt good to test his arms and shoulders. To know, wounded or not, crippled or not, that he was still the man he had always been. That he could still manage his affairs, guide his family, help his friends, be a burden to no one.

  Still, he humored the Israeli. He let his crewmen, with Lesko, lift him into the jet and settle him in his seat. He let Tovah pamper him, cover him, check his dressing, feel his pulse, until at last she had a need of her own and made her way, in the sky over France, to the aircraft's lavatory.

  Left alone, he tested his strength against the arms of his seat. He lifted himself, once and again, muscles flexing, then relaxing.

  The bone splinter moved. It reached the fibrous wall of his aorta. It might have slid past. But his heart had quickened. It sucked the splinter toward it.

  One more time, he decided, then I will rest so that my pulse does not give me away. He raised himself once more.

  Good. He felt good. A bit light-headed now, and a fullness in his chest, but these would pass. He settled back. He turned his head to watch the clouds, his eyes half-closed. The clouds moved toward him. They settled over his eyes, fogging them.

  Tovah found him that way.

  The Bell Ranger, diplomatic clearance confirmed by radio, had followed the broad, tree-lined avenue leading to Restauradores Square in the modern section of Lisbon. Leo Belkin guided the pilot to a squat three-story building with a curved facade and a large painted circle on its roof.

  Not thirty minutes had passed before X rays and blood samples of both men had been taken and Billy was wheeled into surgery. The Russians were efficient, thorough. There was not the one promised doctor, but three, among them a Soviet bone specialist and a Portuguese neurosurgeon.

  Bannerman, for his part, was satisfied that he'd suffered no nerve damage. His fingers worked stiffly but they worked. His injury could wait. Billy's couldn't. Still, he welcomed the injection that deadened his right arm from the elbow.

  Susan had born up well. Even Belkin had remarked on it. She'd helped Billy onto the stretcher, helped remove his clothing, took possession of his personal effects and h
is pistol. An embassy guard held out his hand for it. She answered with a cool shake of her head.

  He wasn't sure what he'd expected from her. Certainly a measure of apprehension considering her surroundings. At the mercy of the sinister Russians. She seemed guarded but not frightened. Nor was Bannerman at all concerned. Those who'd seen them leave knew where they were going. Carla and Janet. John Waldo, wherever he was, would soon find out. There would be no duplicity. The price would be too high.