The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  Nor was she unduly solicitous concerning his injury. That pleased him. What's done is done. You go on from there.

  The same applies, he reminded himself, to the vision that had tortured him throughout their flight to Lisbon. Susan's body. Slammed backward. Sprawling among the shrubs of the Puente Romano. Himself frozen in place, unable to move, his back to Tucker, waiting for him to shoot, or for Lesko to shoot. Hoping one of them would.

  But the body was here. Alive and well. Confident. Strong. No more apologies. Let's go, Bannerman, she seemed to be saying. Quit your moping. You would have missed me anyway.

  Leo Belkin reappeared. He stepped to the door of the operating room. He opened it, holding it ajar. He spoke to the surgeon in Russian. Paul knew a few words, enough to get the sense of them. The surgeon answered him sharply, then ordered him out. The colonel approached Bannerman, his expression a trifle sheepish, the look of a man who had just learned the limits of KGB authority.

  “It is going well,” he told Bannerman. “He estimates two hours of surgery. Three if I pester him again.” He glanced at Susan, a slight bow, then back to Bannerman.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked. “Is your head clear?”

  “More than it was.” His eyes were on Susan.

  “This thing I wish to show you. It is in the communications office, top floor. If you are up to it.”

  Bannerman chewed his lip. “Might Miss Lesko join us?”

  The question startled Belkin. He had a sense that it startled Bannerman as well.

  “That would be—imprudent,” he said.

  ”I trust her, Colonel Belkin.”

  The Russian stepped closer. He dropped his voice. “This gesture—I understand it, of course. However—”

  “It's not a gesture. I want her to know it, I want you to know it too.”

  Susan found a chair. She sat in it.

  “If it's all the same to you,” she said to both of them, “I'll stay close to Billy.”

  Leo Belkin looked at her. He bowed again, more deeply this time. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you,” she said to Paul.

  “What's so important?” Paul asked. The elevator door closed on the infirmary floor.

  The question, asked distractedly, annoyed Leo Belkin. He might as well have brought the woman. She was very much with him in his mind.

  “You have an expression,” he said. “Benefit of the doubt. I will ask only that. I will not ask for trust.”

  ”I will listen.”

  “You will refrain from judgment as to my motives?”

  “Until you get to the point of this, yes.”

  “Have you any knowledge of computers?”

  “I'm a travel agent.”

  The Russian grunted. “Of course you are.” The door slid open.

  The communications room, emptied of personnel, resembled nothing so much as a repair shop for electronic equipment. Television monitors, scanners, radio receivers, computers, crowded every surface. Shelves were crammed with boxes, many with their original labels, much of it surveillance equipment. Most of the labels were in English, some in Japanese. The computers were by IBM and Apple.

  Leo Belkin dragged a second chair to an IBM workstation whose power was already on. This, Bannerman assumed, is where Belkin had been while he and Billy were in X ray. Belkin gestured toward the nearest chair. Bannerman sat. Belkin took the other. He touched a key.

  Three words, in Cyrillic, appeared on the screen. Bannerman knew only the first and third.

  Belkin touched another. The same words appeared in English.

  “What am I looking at, Leo?” Bannerman asked, stifling a yawn. Blood loss was taking its toll.

  “You do not know?”

  “It sounds like a computer game.”

  “You might call it that. Yes.”

  “Colonel Belkin—” He rubbed his eyes.

  “Forgive me. Press any key. The rest is interactive.”

  Bannerman touched the “space bar.” The words

  THE RIPPER EFFECT blinked on the screen.

  He sat for an hour. Now fully alert. Fascinated. He made people vanish. He watched the effect. Most often, he knew what it would be, even before the screen told him.

  “This is American?” he asked finally.

  “Yes.”

  “It is operational?”

  “No. It is still—a game.”

  “It's more than that. How did you get it?”

  The Russian shrugged. “By hook or crook.”

  Bannerman looked at him, wearily. He waited.

  Belkin took a breath. “It was taken from a telephone line. A modem. The data you're looking at were transmitted from the residence of Mr. Roger Clew to the residence of Colonel Harold Hagler.”

  Bannerman was impressed. And surprised. Electronic eavesdropping was a fact of Washington life. Roger should have known better than to bring this sort of work home from the office, let alone transmit it from his home without benefit of a scrambler. He would have had his lines swept regularly but there was always a way, especially in a private residence. On the other hand, nearly all communications from the State Department are monitored internally. Roger must not have wanted this monitored. He must have seen that as the greater risk.

  “This Hagler”—the name was vaguely familiar—“His field is counterterrorism?”

  Belkin nodded.

  “Who else knows about this? Americans, I mean.”

  Belkin reached for the keyboard. “In the beginning, frankly, we thought you did.” He tapped several keys. A message appeared. A series of them. Between Clew and Hagler. There were references to himself. And to Lesko. And to one Irwin Kaplan.

  “Who is Kaplan?” Bannerman asked.

  “Drug Enforcement Administration. As you have seen, the program seeks the elimination of the narco-terrorist as well as the garden-variety terrorist.”

  Bannerman reached to advance the screen. There were more messages. Abruptly, Belkin reached over his hand. He hit the “escape” button. The screen went blank, except for a hard-disk prompt.

  “If you were to read further’*—Belkin chose his words— “you would see that Roger Clew and Hagler and, to some extent, Kaplan, hoped to recruit you and your people as a sort of research team for the purpose of field testing the Ripper Effect.”

  ”I gathered as much.” Bannerman remembered Clew's visit after he delivered Susan and her father to Westport. He said, then, that he was working on something. He would not say what. Only that he might soon call in a favor. “Why wouldn't they simply ask?”

  “What would your answer have been?”

  “No.”

  “They knew that as well.” He gestured toward the screen. “Reading further, you would also see a discussion of various measures, to be taken by them, which might persuade you to say otherwise.”

  Bannerman was not surprised. That sounded like Roger. “Why don't you want me to see them?”

  “They are—inflammatory.”

  “As in sending car bombs into Westport?”

  Belkin, startled, raised an eyebrow. Then he nodded. “That and more. Yes. Eventually, the man funding that assault would have been identified as a Syrian named—”

  “Jibril. I know.”

  Belkin blinked. “But you realize that he is innocent.”

  “Only of this.” Bannerman gestured toward the machine. “Tell me about Urs Brugg. Where does he fit in?”

  “He knows nothing of this.”

  “Then what does he want from me?”

  “Your friendship. Your help if he needs it.” Belkin explained Urs Brugg's concerns about the future of Europe, Zurich in particular. “He admires Mr. Lesko. He also has a great sense of family. His hope, in my opinion, is that you will one day be part of it through Mr. Lesko. And, in consequence, feel obligated to it.”

  ”I see.”

  “He is an honorable man.”

  ”I hope so.’*

  “Never doubt that, Mr. Bannerman,” the Russian said firml
y. “He did lure you to Marbella, he did let it be known, by the right people, that you were coming. They were there to protect you, even from me, his friend. They were also there so that he could meet them, perhaps recruit them. Had you had a chance to talk, he would have told you all of this.”

  Bannerman believed him. “And you, Colonel? What do you want from me?”

  In reply, Belkin removed the floppy disk from the machine and called up a document from the hard disk. It was all in Russian. Belkin began scanning it. There were charts, lists, blurred photographs. In terms of content, it seemed to resemble the other.

  “Your government,” he explained, “has compiled a data base containing files on all known terrorists and drug traffickers. So has mine, although our computers are somewhat less sophisticated. Your government has done little with this information. Nor have they shared it with mine. There has been talk, since Glasnost, of doing so. It will happen, but slowly. Cooperation will be limited, not because of mistrust but because your system of government, your checks and balances, obviate any possibility of decisive action, to say nothing of confidentiality. Your most effective weapon, assassination, is proscribed by your laws.”

  “There are other weapons, Colonel. Believe it or not, killing is not my first choice. Sometimes they kill you back.”

  Belkin raised a hand, keeping to his train of thought. “This ‘Ripper Effect’ is clearly extracurricular. Not sanctioned by your government. The work of a few men who have grown impatient.”

  Bannerman waited.

  “It is an excellent tool. Superbly done.”

  Bannerman said nothing.

  “And you know it, Mr. Bannerman. In fact, you use it. Intuitively. Random terror, confusion, indirect action”— Belkin stopped himself; he closed one eye—“Speaking of the latter—those three who shot Elena—that house on the hill. I assume they are dead?”

  “They are.”

  Belkin shook his head in appreciation. “Mama's Boy comes to town, he is thwarted in his purpose by the unforeseen, he leaves with his work unfinished, and still his enemies are destroyed and the legend grows. I rest my case.”

  Bannerman shrugged off the compliment. He laid his hand across the keyboard. “You're saying you want me to use this thing. But you want me to work with you, not Roger.”

  “My government will act. Yours will not.” He held up a hand. “Please do not say no. Hear me first.”

  “Why should I do this? For you, or anyone.”

  “Because you can. Because it ought to be done. And because I think that your peaceful years in Westport have come to an end.”

  “I'm going back there tomorrow.”

  “You will be arrested. Possibly shot on sight. Mr. Clew knows that you know. He is certain that you mean to kill him.”

  “For that car bomb nonsense?”

  Belkin fidgeted. He lit his pipe. “Ah—there is more, I'm afraid. There is the matter of your attempt on the life of Colonel Hagler.”

  Lesko watched as Elena, head high, eyes clear, followed her Uncle's wheelchair across the tarmac of Zurich's airport to the waiting limousine.

  His driver and bodyguard, both grim faced, lifted him inside. Willem and Tovah were already seated. Willem pretended to be in conversation with him, nodding his head, gesturing, as he covered his lap with a robe. To any observer, Lesko realized, Urs Brugg was still alive.

  He would be taken to his home. The family would be gathered at once. A decision would be made as to the timing of the announcement, first of an illness, and then, eventually, unavoidably, the death of Urs Brugg.

  It was Elena who had given those instructions. “When the powerful die suddenly, ” she told Lesko, “there is often chaos. There are always vultures. ” The cause of death, as yet undecided, will be such that he would have been alert to the end, giving instructions, making appointments, all duly witnessed by his surviving family and by his lawyer.

  Lesko held back. He felt useless. Worse, he blamed himself all the more. Urs Brugg had been right. There was never a need for him to go to Spain. It had been an indulgence. And, ultimately, it had cost this good man his life.

  The limousine departed. Elena watched it go. He wished that she had gone with it, leaving him there. He had his bag. He could just walk to the terminal, book a flight, and leave quietly. All this let's-get-our-stories-straight business had begun to sicken him. That's what it was. All business. Even Bannerman wouldn't have been that cold-blooded. Bannerman liked the guy. So did he.

  Yes. That's what Lesko would do. First he'd see Elena home safely. So she could get busy. Not much question who's in charge now. Willem damned near clicked his heels. But at least he cried. Not so much as a whimper out of her.

  She was turning now. Walking back toward him. The Godmother. Maybe he should kiss her hand.

  “Listen, um”—he looked away—“Suppose I get you into a cab. Get you home.”

  She blinked. Her lips parted.

  ”I mean, you've got things pretty much under control here. And it's not like I'm family. I'd better—” He cocked his head toward a row of parked Swissair 747s.

  Her chin began to quiver. Her color rose. Tears—finally, he thought—rimmed her eyes.

  ”Um—you want a cup of coffee first or anything?”

  “N—No.” She choked.

  It wasn't just the tears. It was disbelief. It was fear. It was as if he'd slapped her.

  “Look—I didn't mean—”

  He never finished. A stuttering sob rose from her chest and tried to escape through teeth that were clenched, through eyes now tightly shut. Sobs wracked her body. Her arms, still in their slings, quivered helplessly. He saw pain as he'd never seen in any human being. The collapse was sudden. And it was total.

  “Look, I—” His own hands flapped uselessly. She'd been holding it in. Now the dam had broken. ”I—um—I didn't mean today.”

  Her face was red, almost purple. The only breaths she took came in tiny gulps and she was choking on them. He reached for her, afraid that she might fall. She yielded, burying her face against his chest, almost vanishing within his arms. Her fingers found his belt. They gripped it, tightly. She said something, he thought. Maybe it was just a sob.

  “What was that?” His lips brushed her hair. “Never mind.” He patted her shoulder. “It's okay. Really. It's okay.”

  The sobbing slowed. “Do—do you swear?” she managed.

  ”I—ah, I didn't hear.”

  She did not look up. ”I said n—n—never.”

  He could barely understand her. She was trembling so. “Yeah, well—sure. Until you get things straightened out.”

  “Lesko?” His name came as a scream. She pulled at his belt, twisting it.

  “Okay,” he purred. “Okay, Elena—sweetheart.”

  The endearment, his first, ever, brought a deep building wail that caused baggage handlers to turn and stare. He held her. He could not speak. At last he heard her voice. It almost seemed to come from within himself.

  ”S—swear it, Lesko,” she gasped. ”I cannot—if you go-”

  He swallowed. ”I won't leave you. Not ever.”

  He held her tightly. Ten minutes later, neither had moved. And tears ran down Lesko's cheeks as well.

  -31-

  Bannerman listened to Leo Belkin's account of the bomb that was harmlessly detonated under Hagler's dashboard.

  He should have been angry, he supposed, but he appreciated the tactic. Confusion to thine enemies. More Ripper Effect in practice. It probably kept Clew out of mischief and kept him from realizing that he had left the country. And, it got Belkin what he wanted, which was Mama's Boy, sitting down in front of this computer and listening to the proposal of a new alliance.

  The Russian, thought Bannerman, was certainly right about the U.S. government's incapacity to deal with these sorts of problems. But Bannerman was not sure he'd have it any other way. The price you pay for an open society. Checks and balances. Congressional scrutiny. Effective action must necessarily be
secret. Conspiratorial. And therefore illegal. The trouble with that is there's no such thing as a secret in Washington. Not for very long. Witness Leo Belkin's possession of these disks.

  Belkin was working the keys again. “Some of this may upset you,” he said. He pressed the “scroll” button until he reached the place that he had kept Bannerman from seeing.