Book Read Free

The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series)

Page 17

by Maxim, John R.


  “Which is what Loftus told me.”

  “So,” Donovan continued, “since he's an old friend, and since I'd somehow put him on the spot, I tried to put him at ease. I made light of the Loftus question and asked about his family. Then, after some small talk, I asked what he could tell me about another name, assuring him that the two inquiries were totally unrelated.”

  Lesko felt a tingling at his neck. “You asked about the Bannerman guy.”

  “Yes.” Donovan paused, not for effect but to choose his words. “The name, I'm convinced, meant nothing to him. He agreed to punch it up. Then, whatever appeared on his console, I heard him mutter ‘Jesus Christ.’ When he came back on the phone he was clearly uncomfortable and evasive. I told him I wanted an answer and would keep making phone calls until I got one. He said he'd get back to me and hung up. I stewed about this for a while and was about to call you when another call came. This one was from Palmer Reid. Ever heard of him?”

  Lesko shook his head. -

  “Reid is old-line CIA. Princeton, wealthy family, very establishment. Probably considered not bright enough for the family's brokerage business so they steered him into foreign service. With his family connections and his own devious nature, Reid did quite well, rising to the Directorate of Operations for Western Europe and then for South America. The Directorate of Operations is responsible for clandestine activities. I'm told that three different CIA directors have tried to get rid of Palmer Reid because none of them have been able to find much tangible result in whatever he does nor could they even figure out exactly what it was Palmer's people were doing.”

  “Come on,*'`Lesko snapped his fingers. “Bannerman, Reid, South America, Elena. What's the connection?”

  “It's better if I take you through the sequence.”

  “Okay. So the Reid guy called you. What did he say?”

  “He acknowledged that Loftus worked for him but only indirectly. Loftus is attached to a special planning unit and one of its jobs is to plot out a long-range antidrug strategy. As Reid tells it, and this addresses three of those elements, they picked up a tip that you might have had recent contact with the Elena woman. Loftus decided to check it out himself. He was not authorized to do so. He exceeded his authority. Reid says it served Loftus right that you roughed him up, and as far as he's concerned the matter is closed.”

  “You believe him?”

  Donovan hesitated. “I have no reason not to. In this case.”

  “What about Susan's boyfriend?”

  More hesitation.

  “Did you ask about him or not?”

  Donovan nodded. “The name did not seem familiar to him. He put me on hold. When he came back he asked me what this Bannerman fellow had to do with the other. I said, ‘What have you got, and why do you have a file on him at all?’ He answered that there's no file as such. The only place Bannerman's name turns up is on a list of what Intelligence people like to call ‘assets.’ In Bannerman's case, he's an asset because he's particularly well-traveled and well-connected. People like Bannerman are useful in making introductions and getting American diplomatic personnel and business executives invited to the right parties. There are many thousands of people on such lists, Ray, and most don't know it. Most are never asked to do anything.”

  “So you think Bannerman is straight,” Lesko said doubtfully.

  “Again, no reason to think otherwise.”

  “Then why did his name shake the other guy up?”

  “Perhaps because I'd told him the two were unrelated. Then, lo and behold, they both led ultimately to Palmer Reid's office, though by’ different routes.”

  “It doesn't bother you that Bannerman's on that list?”

  “Palmer Reid pointed out that I'm on it myself.”

  ,Donovan watched Lesko as he said that. His friend's eyes, which had been shining dangerously since his first mention of Paul Bannerman, had relaxed into their normal glower. Donovan was satisfied that, whatever might be going on here, Lesko truly did not know about it and that Lesko, therefore, had not been using him. He gestured toward the buffet table.

  “Let's get some lunch, Ray. You've probably had us both worrying over nothing.”

  Buzz Donovan hailed a taxi on Vanderbilt and dropped Lesko off at the Beckwith Regency before continuing on to his own apartment on East 57th Street.

  He hoped he'd handled the meeting well, though he feared that he might have told Lesko more than was good for him. Ray Lesko was not a man to agitate, certainly not where his daughter was concerned.

  Quite possibly he had said too much. But he'd felt sure going in that Lesko knew more than he was letting on and Lesko had hoped to draw an admission out of him. In the past, whenever Lesko seemed to be even peripherally involved in a thing, he usually turned out to be right at its center. That did not appear to be the case here. Lesko seemed quite genuinely in the dark.

  He didn't like lying to Ray. But it was a very small lie. One of omission. He'd told Ray that his friend had muttered “Jesus Christ” at the mention of Paul Bannerman —he probably shouldn't have said even that—but he didn't mention the almost palpable fear that came back through the phone line. Donovan was sure without question that his mention of Paul Bannerman had prompted his friend's call to Palmer Reid and Reid's call back to him. And yet Palmer Reid had behaved as if he were hearing the name for the first time.

  But then, Palmer Reid is a liar. Always had been. Probably pathological. George Bernard Shaw once wrote that the penalty of being a liar is not that one can't be believed, but that one can't believe anyone else. That neatly described the cynical and suspicious nature of Palmer Reid. But it didn't begin to describe Reid's capacity for criminal mischief while cloaking himself in the flag of the United States of America. And if this Paul Bannerman is involved with Palmer Reid he is almost surely cut from the same cloth and Susan Lesko has found herself in very bad company indeed.

  Well, Buzz Donovan decided, we'll just have to do something about that, won't we. We'll see what this Bannerman fellow is all about. Two or three more phone calls ought to do it.

  Lesko entered the lobby of the Beckwith Regency on Park Avenue at 54th and approached the desk. A new clerk was on duty. She didn't know Lesko and was visibly startled to see such a rough, scowling face, and the body of an aging wrestler, neither of which fit the Regency's customer profile as described to her during employee indoctrination. He gave his name and told her she was holding an envelope for him with a room key. She found it, he took it, then he proceeded to the elevator, his scowl deepening.

  Lesko didn't like that talk with Donovan at all. Not that any of it necessarily meant anything except that Buzz had read too many spy novels and had too much time on his hands. None of it connected. Take it all piece by piece and all of it could be explained away.

  So Robert Loftus works for Palmer Reid. Who gives a shit? So the former FBI guy is now probably CIA and has some new secret job. Who gives a shit about that either? Anyway, almost everything's a secret with those assholes. Even the time of day is on a need-to-know basis. The real reason everything's a secret is that hardly anything they plan ever works the way they meant it to and hardly anything they ever find out ever matters a good goddamn in the long run and if they didn't keep it all secret everybody else would know that too. Anyway, Lesko couldn't care less.

  Except Donovan had lied to him.

  He wasn't sure what the lie was, exactly. But he'd watched Buzz's eyes. There was something sitting back there. Then there was all that business about not wanting to talk on the phone. What couldn't he have said? Whatever it was, Lesko was fairly sure that whatever Donovan didn't want to say on the phone, he didn't say back at the Yale Club, either.

  Wait a second. Hold it, Lesko thought. I'm getting like the fucking CIA. A conspiracy mentality. Those guys don't even take anything at face value. Let out a fart in public and they'll think it's a secret code. You know what's doing this? It's those fucking four o'clock-in-the-mornings, that's what's doing it. Last
night Elena's name comes up for the first time in two years, from the guy Loftus, who is supposed to be a pro but is very easily spotted, and who brings up Elena's name a little too easily, and these things bother me more than I admit ... so my subconscious decides to aggravate me about them at four in the morning. So I get this stupid dream with Susan in it, and Katz in it being a jerk, and Paul Bannerman in it except he looks like me, and Elena standing outside looking like she wants to kiss and make up, and Buzz is watching all this, scribbling in his notebook. I should make sense out of that? I should think the dream was a premonition just because Buzz calls me the next morning and asks what's going on? He asked it last night, too, for Christ's sake. The dream didn't mean shit.

  Except he was still aggravated. And except Donovan lied.

  What if the lie was about Susan's boyfriend? What if Paul Bannerman is more than just a name on a list of potential assets and is somehow involved with Loftus and Reid? And Elena. And therefore maybe even Katz. That would connect everything, wouldn't it?

  Uh-oh.

  No.

  Lesko didn't even want to think about that. What he wanted was to get up to his room, get some coffee sent up, and then go through this envelope full of security reports so he could start his tour. He wanted to do that before the urge got too great to go up to Westport and look up this Paul Bannerman and bang him against a wall until he told Lesko what the hell was going on here.

  At the bank of pay phones just inside the Pan Am building off Vanderbilt Avenue, Robert Loftus sat reading a folded copy of The New York Times. He did not look up as a second man, younger but similarly dressed in a dark business suit, approached him and whispered several words. The other man walked on and took a position some distance away. Loftus lowered his paper and stared thoughtfully at one of the phones. With a sigh, he stood up and limped toward it, favoring a painful left knee. He closed the booth and, after another long moment of hesitation, tapped out the area code for Virginia and then a number. A voice said “Yes?” Loftus said his name and asked for extension 004. Another voice said “Yes?” The voice of Palmer Reid.

  “Donovan met Lesko, sir. They had lunch at the Yale Club.”

  “Any idea what was said between them?”

  “No, sir. Except that his call to Lesko followed within minutes of his conversation with you. Judging by his tone and his wish to see Lesko immediately and privately, I don't think you threw him entirely off the scent, sir.”

  “Where is Donovan now?”

  “Apparently headed back to his apartment. Your man Burdick is on him. My man, Poole ,just rejoined me after Donovan dropped off Lesko.”

  “They are both my men, Robert.”

  Loftus closed his eyes. “Of course, sir.”

  “Where did Lesko go?”

  “Well, that's an odd thing, sir. He had an overnight bag with him. He took it to the Beckwith Regency Hotel.”

  “The Regency? That's quite expensive, isn't it? And why would Lesko be staying at a hotel when he lives not thirty minutes away?”

  “Doug Poole says he didn't actually check in, sir. There was an envelope with a room key waiting for him.”

  “So he's meeting someone.”

  “I don't know, sir.”

  “Bannerman, perhaps?”

  “Sir, I don't think Lesko knows Bannerman. I don't think he even knew Bannerman existed until last night.”

  “On what do you base that opinion?”

  “Lesko's daughter called Bannerman after her father took her home. She told Bannerman that she had finally told her father about him and that her father was looking forward to meeting him.”

  “That's all?”

  “On that subject, yes, sir.’”

  “Robert,” Palmer Reid's tone had an edge to it, “I could just as easily conclude from that conversation that the two men do in fact know each other and have kept that knowledge from the daughter.”

  “I've stated my impression, sir.” He closed his eyes again. “But the tapes are on their way to you by courier. With your superior experience, you may catch a nuance I missed.”

  There was a brief silence over the line as Palmer Reid pondered whether there might be insolence hidden somewhere in that last remark. “I may indeed,” he said finally. “What else did Bannerman and the girl talk about?”

  “There were some expressions of mutual affection.” Loftus was stalling.

  “What else?”

  “Sir, Bannerman and the girl seem to be planning a ski vacation together. There was a reference to the amount of packing that has to be done by Friday. I assume that's when they're leaving.”

  “Their destination?”

  “They didn't say. It's apparently going to be a trip of some duration. She asked if two ski outfits would be enough for ‘that many days' and whether she'd need evening clothes. He answered that the only time they'd dress for dinner was their one night on the train.”

  “The train, you say.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That sounds like Europe.”

  “Yes, sir. But,” he added pointedly, “it does sound to me like a pleasure trip.”

  Reid ignored the remark. “Bannerman makes trips such as this at least annually, doesn't he? Sometimes to the Austrian Tyrol. Most often to the Grisons in Switzerland. And both are reached through Zurich.”

  “Sir, he travels to a lot of places.”

  “Zurich, Robert,” he said archly. “What is the significance of Zurich?”

  “Sir,” Loftus gritted his teeth. “If you're referring to Swiss bank accounts, I doubt very much whether Bannerman has one or needs one. His funds are all invested in Westport and they're just as out of reach as they'd be in Zurich.”

  “Those are my funds, Robert.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I will pass over the fact that there are others who have funds in Zurich, powerful private interests, criminals and even governments who might find it in their interest to support Paul Bannerman's activities.”

  Loftus had been afraid of this. If he asked what activities, there being no evidence of any whatsoever, Reid would call him naive. He said nothing.

  “I will pass over that question and get to one that is even more intriguing. We have some reports that Elena is in South America, and others that she is in. Europe. If you were to begin looking for her in Europe, Robert, where would you start?”

  Loftus closed his eyes again. “Probably Zurich, sir.”

  “Why, Robert?”

  Loftus didn't answer. The question was essentially rhetorical. Elena had been born and raised in Zurich, born of a Bolivian national who was then stranded there when Bolivia declared war on Germany and Italy in 1943. She held dual citizenship and her mother had married into a large and wealthy Zurich family. Elena had plenty of roots there, plenty of friends. It was, true enough, where one would start looking for her, but if it were up to Loftus they wouldn't bother. She wanted to be out of it and she was. As far as he was concerned, that was all Bannerman and Zivic and the rest of them wanted as well.

  He'd tried expressing that view to Palmer Reid and had been ridiculed for it. Reid saw conspiracies everywhere. Every conversation had a hidden meaning, every meeting, a hidden agenda. You couldn't even ask him if he was going to a Redskins game without Reid wondering why you were trying to determine his whereabouts on a given Sunday afternoon.

  Not that he wasn't right occasionally. Law of averages. And maybe the country needs a few professional paranoids. Maybe they need to be in positions of power because if they weren't, no one would listen to them. Not that Palmer Reid ever told anyone what he was doing. Certainly no one outside Operations. Certainly no politically appointed director. Imagine telling anything important to a loose cannon like William Casey or a gee-whiz type like George Bush. On the other hand, the smart ones didn't even want to know what Reid was doing.

  “Robert?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “What is Bannerman up to?”

 

‹ Prev