The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series)
Page 20
Colonel Zivic had made up his mind that when the time came for him to retire, or should he be recalled to Moscow with even the hint that he might not be reassigned outside the Eastern Bloc, he would move immediately to ensure that his declining years were spent as gracefully and tranquilly as possible. He would disappear quietly if he could. He would defect if absolutely necessary. But he would remain in the West and enjoy its decadence as long as it lasted.
Zivic's recall to Moscow came during his sixth year in Rome. The order was hand-delivered by two new deputies whose primary duty, it was clear, was to watch him closely. He knew this did not necessarily imply a suspicion of unreliability. It was purely routine, but only in cases of permanent recall. He invited the two deputies to the Ranieri on a night when it was Paul's habit to dine there. Paul greeted him and Anton responded with uncharacteristic correctness and introduced his companions, leaving it to Paul to judge their purpose by their brusque and wary manner.
“How are your helicopter lessons going?” Anton asked.
Paul didn't blink. “Quite well,” he said. “Have you ever ridden one?”
“Never.”
“Would you like to come up with me one day soon?”
“Alas, I'm leaving on a journey tomorrow.”
“Another time then. By the way, Miss Farrell sends her regards.”
Two hours and several vodkas later, the three Russians arrived at the taxi stand on the north end of the Piazza di Spagna. A prostitute astride a Vespa motor scooter chatted teasingly with the first driver in the line. He was an older man, Anton Zivic's age, but he was blushing like a schoolboy.
“Hey, how about you?” she addressed Anton in Italian. “You want to take a ride with me?”
“Some other time perhaps.” He opened the door for his two companions. The second one hesitated, preferring to have Anton sit in between. Anton gave him a friendly push.
“Last chance.” The prostitute revved her motor and slid forward on her seat, showing more of her thigh in the process. “Come, papa. Jump on.”
Zivic slammed the door and did. The Vespa was almost out of sight before the two frantic Russians made it clear to the driver that he was to give chase, and only when they attempted to scramble back out did he floor his accelerator and begin a winding, screeching chase of shadows through the darkened streets of Rome. The prostitute was Molly, the taxi driver was Billy McHugh. Within twenty minutes, Anton was safely at an apartment in the Trastevere district, negotiating the conditions of his defection with Paul Bannerman. Molly Farrell and John Waldo were en route to Anton's own apartment to retrieve those personal effects he requested.
By the next morning, Anton was at his bank in Geneva, withdrawing his funds and a few securities, leaving intact those funds belonging to the Soviet Union. By noon he was aboard PAN AM flight 006 to New York City, traveling under a Swiss passport that he'd prepared for this eventuality. At Kennedy Airport he vanished. He would remain in hiding until the conditions under which he had come to this country were confirmed by the State Department to the satisfaction of Paul Bannerman.
Paul arrived in Washington a day later and went directly to the office of Robert Clew, now an Under Secretary for Political Affairs. Clew told him he had a problem. The Soviets, reacting quickly, had offered to permit the emigration of one hundred Russian Jews or to release a western agent of comparable rank if Colonel Zivic were returned before his defection became public knowledge. And that, Clew told him, was only their opening bid. The Administration was getting excited because such a trade would constitute a considerable human rights coup. In the meantime, he said, Palmer Reid was acting as if the defection and any eventual trade were all of his design and he wanted Zivic brought to his Westport facility for at least a few days of interrogation before Zivic realized he was going to be returned.
“Reid has nothing to do with this,” Paul told him. “What Westport facility?”
Clew explained that Westport was the latest of several suburban rehabilitation centers that had become operational during the Carter Administration for the purpose of easing burnt-out agents back into something resembling normal lives. Once Reid was satisfied that they could function normally, they were relocated. Some, who had prices on their heads or criminal charges pending against them, were given new identities.
“These are like halfway houses?” Paul asked.
“Halfway towns, actually.” It was the first time Paul heard the phrase.
“How many are there?”
“You don't need to know. . . .”
“Oh, stop that.”
“Six, counting Westport.”
Paul tried to imagine any of his people submitting to a retraining program. “How do you get them to agree?”
“It's a condition of their pensions,” Clew answered. “It's really not a bad deal, Paul. A contract agent normally gets no pension at all, let alone help getting set up in a new life.”
“Westport. That's Westport in Connecticut?”
“Yes.”
“And this is a humanitarian concept, you say?” -
“That's the idea.”
”A humanitarian concept,” Paul couldn't help but smile, “that is run by Palmer Reid.”
The under secretary grinned sheepishly and spread his hands. “What can I tell you? Reid volunteered. No one else wanted to touch it.”
Paul shook his head as if to clear it, then tapped Roger Clew's desk, indicating a return to the subject at hand. “I'm not going to surrender Colonel Zivic. And nobody's going to trade him.”
“It could get messy, Paul. You better have some leverage.”
“Tell me more about Westport.”
CHAPTER 12
Roger Clew could tell Paul little in terms of specifics. He estimated that about two thousand service employees and contract agents had passed through the system since the Carter years. Perhaps a tenth of those had vanished into new identities. A few, a handful, were judged to be beyond rehabilitation and were institutionalized. There might be a dozen to twenty agents in each of the six facilities at any one time, about the same number of staff and security people; the usual stay was about a year. At the core of each facility was a private hospital bought with federal funds as the administration and training center. These private hospitals did not attract much attention because most of the towns had a half-dozen more just like them—private clinics specializing in psychiatric care and treatment of drug and alcohol abuse by the affluent. The hospitals in turn formed dummy corporations that owned various businesses in the community—shops, a couple of restaurants, a few services—that were used for vocational training and for helping agents become accustomed to dealing with ordinary people and problems in less extravagant ways.
“Who does Reid answer to? Who checks up on him?”
The man shrugged. “He reports to the President's CIA Director.”
“I'm serious.”
“Nobody. Reid is Reid.”
“What about the Inspector General's office or the General Accounting office?”
“They can't go near it. The facilities are classified Top Secret and Reid's funds are discretionary. He doesn't account for them but so what? You don't either.”
“Molly?”
“Hi.”
“Is your phone secure?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Listen,” he told her, “both Reid and the State Department are making noises like they'd rather swap Anton back than give him asylum. I'll make the best deal I can but I'm going to have trouble with Reid. If it gets nasty he might put a freeze on my funds and get State to lift my passport to make sure I'm stuck here. You get up to Zurich first thing and clear out the account.” He read her the number and the code. “They'll want to verify, so tomorrow at 9 A.M. your time, I'll be at the Marriott Hotel in Stamford, Connecticut. There's also about two hundred thousand dollars' worth of lire in my safe at the U.S.I.A.” He gave her the combination. “Get that tonight but don't leave any signs of a break-in.”
“I'll use Billy.”
“Bring Carla and John Waldo with you to Zurich in case you need backup. Have them stay with you when you get back to Rome and set up a system of shifts so everybody else is outside covering your street.”
“You really do expect trouble, don't you?”
“Better safe than sorry. And you're going to be sitting on almost three .million dollars.”
“What's in Stamford, Connecticut?”
“That's a whole other story. Have you ever heard of a system of halfway towns that are used to retrain and depressurize agents being retired from the field?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Ask around. There are six. Westport is one of them. I'm going up to take a look and that's where I'll meet with Reid. There's a phony dry-out hospital there called the Greenfield Hill Memorial Clinic. If Reid should try to put me on ice, the way to bet is that's where I'll be. I'll call you every day at nine in the morning and six at night, your time. If I don't call, I've been snatched and all of you get over here, fast.”
“Gotcha.”
“One more thing. Reid comes from Connecticut. He's twice divorced but he has a brother and sister living, I think, in Greenwich, and some other family in Palm Beach. If he snatches me, you snatch at least two of them.”
“Speaking of better-safe-than-sorry, maybe I'd better send Billy over now.”
“Maybe you'd better. After he cleans out my safe.”
“Paul?”
“That's it for now, Molly.”
“You said you'd make the best deal you can for Anton. You wouldn't give him up, would you?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Herr Bannerman?” The voice belonged to Karl Vogele, Managing Director of the Bordier-Hentsch Bank on Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse. “How are you today, sir?”
“I'm fine, Herr Vogele.” Paul spoke clearly and distinctly, aware that even though the banker knew his voice it was being fed into a voice printer for positive identification. “The transaction is authorized and Miss Farrell is acting as my agent.”
“And how is the weather in Connecticut, sir?”
“It's not the South of France.” Any other answer, any description of local conditions, would have alerted the banker that Paul was calling under duress.
“Excellent,” Herr Vogele answered. “Fraulein Farrell is anxious to speak with you. Shall I connect you to the drawing room?”
“Thank you.” Most private Swiss bankers had small, elegant parlor-type rooms for consultations. Conversations in such rooms were never recorded. Paul waited for Molly to pick up.
“All clear here,” she said. “Billy got your lire, no sweat. It's converted to dollars and he's bringing you fifty thousand of it, okay?”
“Fine. When does he get here?”
“He's already at the airport. With the time difference he should show up at the Marriott around four this afternoon after a stop in New York to buy weapons.”
“Who said we need weapons?”
“Wait'll you hear. You told me to ask around about the halfway towns? Janet Herzog is a graduate.”
“Come on.”
“Four years ago. It wasn't Westport, it was Wilmette. That's a suburb on Chicago's North Shore. Remember four years ago she decided to pack it in? She heard Reagan was cutting funding for all kinds of programs and she thought she might not get a chance at a pension. They also give you. . . ,”
“I know what they give. What did she say?”
“She thought it might be worth all the bullshit they put you through first. You know about that, too?”
“Yes.”
“Well, anyway, she said she always felt funny about it because a couple who had left long before she did said they'd write to her but they never did. And some of the others were real damaged goods who she couldn't believe would ever be let off a leash. She left Wilmette after about six months, which was faster than most because she already had a trade—Janet designs jewelry— and they set her up near New Orleans with all new paper. She was there about two months and one of Palmer Reid's people approached her about doing a job for them.”
“An assassination?”
“You got it. Somewhere in South America. Janet said get lost. He came back again and got pushy and grabbed her arm, which you don't do with Janet, and she blinded him with her car keys and then backed her car over him. She figured recess was over so she headed back to Rome. You didn't ask what she'd been doing all that time?”
“I did,” Paul made a face. “She said she was designing jewelry.”
“Ask a silly question.”
“You better come over. All of you. Call them. Don't go back to Rome.”
“Then what?”
He told her.
Paul drove to Westport in his rented Ford. It was an easy fifteen minutes from Stamford on the Connecticut Turnpike, which ran parallel to the coast of Long Island Sound. A clear and perfect May morning. He whistled as he drove.
From the Westport exit ramp, checking his map at the light, he made his way to the Greenfield Hill Memorial Clinic on Long Lots Road. It was a huge white colonial, once a private estate. No gate, low stone walls, but there were sixty yards of open lawn up to the house. No cover. He counted two groundskeepers near the stone wall, both idle, and two men dressed as male nurses further on. All probably armed guards.
He continued past the clinic property and began a random two-hour drive through the residential and commercial streets. Pretty. Very pretty. Lots of white and pink dogwoods. Azaleas in full bloom everywhere. Trees fat with tender spring leaves. Comfortable homes, the kind that were meant for living rather than for show. The town had an informal kind of beauty, as opposed to the self-conscious grooming of a Palm Beach or a Beverly Hills. The people he saw seemed relaxed as well. They had an easy this-is-who-I-am look about them. If you like me, great. If you don't, God bless you anyway.
A strange place to find Palmer Reid, he thought. Reid didn't belong here. It was not a place of moves and countermoves and lies.
As he drove, casually exploring, an idea that had begun in idle self-amusement began to sprout and expand like the hemlocks he saw. It had such a sweet irony to it that Paul knew he had to be careful not to be enchanted by it.
Palmer Reid didn't belong here at all.
His only stop was at a bookstore where he picked up an illustrated volume about Westport past and present and a better map than the one he'd found in Stamford. With these he took a roundabout route back to the turnpike entrance, past the golf course of a place called Longshore. His book said it was once a private country club but now anyone could use it. A pool, tennis courts, a handsome Norman Rockwellian clubhouse and restaurant right on the water. And a marina. And then a gorgeous public beach where a hundred healthy young bodies were working on the base for their summer tans or launching small sailboats. Nice. Very nice.
He knew that he was behaving unprofessionally. This was a reconnaissance, not a Sunday drive. There were people at the clinic who had seen his photograph, who might have seen him pass, who might be searching for him even now.
He didn't want them in Westport either.
He drove back to the Stamford Marriott. .