The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series)
Page 21
In his room, his message light was blinking. He called the operator. The message was the private number, no name, of his friend at State. He dialed it.
“They've clipped your wings, Paul. Your passport's lifted.”
“How is it tabbed?” Paul was asking what action was to be taken when he tried to use it.
“Security risk—yellow.” That meant apprehend with caution and detain. Reid, Paul assumed, must have learned about that morning's withdrawal in Zurich. He would have ordered that Molly be picked up as well. Paul checked his watch. She should be in the air by now. There was a good chance Reid would know it if she used her own passport.
“Is Reid in Westport?”
“Last I heard.”
“I'll see him soon.”
“You watch yourself.”
“I owe you.” Paul broke the connection and dialed the number of Greenfield Hill Clinic.
Palmer Reid, demanding to know where Paul was, and told close by, insisted upon an immediate meeting. Paul said he'd be there at six. He arrived on time, was checked for weapons, and escorted to an office apparently belonging to the facility's administrator. The office had a window overlooking the broad sloping lawn. The building's shadow was lengthening over it.
When he entered on the floor below, Paul caught a glimpse of a woman in a blue jumpsuit being led away by a male nurse. She seemed wooden, docile; probably drugged. Now, below his window, Paul saw that a groundskeeper, a legitimate one, was planting marigolds in a flower bed. As he moved on to another section a stocky middle-aged man, also in a blue jumpsuit, knelt at each fresh planting and began tearing it up. He'd done that to half a row before two more male nurses stopped him and brought him inside.
Reid entered the room, offering no greeting. Paul read his expression. He was angry. But he also seemed pleased with himself.
“You kill a lot of them, don't you, Palmer?” Paul asked quietly.
”A lot of whom?” The question startled Reid.
Paul gestured where the man had been. “These agents. The blue jumpsuits. Here and in your other towns.”
“What other towns? There are no other. . . .” He didn't bother to finish. “In any case, the answer is no. That is a despicable suggestion.”
“I see.”
“Your tone suggests doubt.”
“Of course I doubt you, Palmer. You almost never tell the truth.”
Reid studied him. “What is the truth, Paul?”
“I think some do get new lives and new paper. But I think they go right on working for you. Not the government. Just you.”
Reid was silent for a long moment, then, “They say you were a good man, Paul, until you turned against your country.”
Bannerman turned from the window. “How's that again?”
Reid used his fingers to tick off the particulars. “You have consistently refused to take an oath of service, though I presume you've at least recited the Pledge of Allegiance at some time in your youth. You have stolen a great sum of money from your country. You have allied yourself with a dangerous Soviet agent who, incidentally, has taken such an oath, except that his is eternally hostile to your country's interests. You have probably brought him into this country illegally and you will doubtless attempt to blackmail your country into granting him unconditional asylum. How am I not to regard such behavior as treasonous?”
Paul had to smile. “I suppose it's useless to point out that Palmer Reid and my country are not one and the same.”
Reid matched his smile. He folded his arms. “I have your Dr. Russo. He was taken two hours ago at Kennedy.”
“I thought I saw a twinkle in your eye.”
“He will be released, you will both be released, when you surrender Colonel Zivic.”
“That's easy,” Paul shrugged. “Bring me a written guarantee of asylum from the Secretary of State. He must also guarantee in writing that Zivic will not be asked to compromise his country's interests because Zivic, as it happens, is not a traitor to his country either.”
“What, pray, would you call him?”
“Retired.”
“Then so are you.”
Paul spent the night under close guard. Supper, brought to his room, was a steam-table lasagna and a half-pint container of milk. He flushed them both down the toilet In the morning, he was escorted back to the office where Reid was already breakfasting. Paul helped himself to Reid's coffee and half a croissant. Reid seemed to be controlling himself with effort.
Munching his croissant, Paul stepped to the window. The morning sun warmed him.
“In view of past service,” he heard Reid clear his throat, “I'm considering meeting you halfway.”
“I'm listening.”
“Bring the Colonel here for one week of interrogation. You may witness it if you like.”
“Why would he trust you? I certainly don't.”
“I rise above the insult.” Reid's jaw tightened. “The fact is, the Colonel's primary usefulness has come and gone. The Soviets believe he's been in our hands for almost a week now and they've surely made adjustments to offset anything he might have told us. Still, he might have some value to me. And of course you'll return the money.”
Paul ignored the last. As for the rest of it, the words some value to me were the essential ones. Reid, at some level, had accepted the fact that he'd get little of real importance out of Zivic. Anton was a man who loved his country just as much as Reid pretended to love his. He would not betray his homeland and even now he was probably very anxious to get word to them that he had not. What Zivic might do, however, was throw Reid a few bones to facilitate a grant of asylum. He might give Reid the names of Americans and Western Europeans who had sold information for money because Anton detested such people. But they would be minor players. Compromised homosexuals, drug addicts, compulsive gamblers, misfits. Men and women who were no longer used because they were by definition unreliable. But at least they'd be something. And it would be Palmer Reid who got the information. Enough to perpetuate the fiction that it was he, Palmer Reid, who had turned in Colonel Anton Zivic.
A horn honked down on the road. Three short beeps. Paul could not see the car but he knew that its driver saw him. That had just been acknowledged. He pretended to stretch and yawn. Three more beeps. Paul nodded once.
“Stand away from there, please.” Reid heard the sound as well.
“Relax, Palmer.” His back still to Reid, Paul cupped a hand to his ear, then made a circular motion with his index finger.
“What do you think you're doing?” Reid pushed to his feet, more annoyed than alarmed.
“Waiting for a phone call.” He crossed to Reid's desk where he spread marmalade on the other half of his croissant. The phone rang. “That will be for me. Molly Farrell's calling.”
Reid snatched up the phone. His color rose when he heard her voice. “He is not available,” he said into the mouthpiece.
“Ask her why you should let her speak to me,” Paul suggested.
Reid hesitated, then asked. Now his color drained. He looked at Paul, his eyes blazing. “You son of a bitch.”
“Trouble at home, Palmer?”
“If you harm one hair . . .”
“Your relatives are in good hands. Ask Molly whose hands.”
He did, and the answer caused him to blink rapidly. His lips tried to form the name but he could only sputter.
“Billy McHugh.” Paul helped him.
“You son of a bitch,” Reid repeated.
A loud sneeze came from the hall outside. “And that would be John Waldo.” With a gesture, Bannerman invited Reid to see for himself.
Still blinking, Reid stepped to the door and opened it. The guard he'd posted was on his knees, hands clasped behind his head, staring up at him helplessly. Reid didn't bother to look for Waldo. He closed the door.
“What do you want?” he asked, his voice a choked whisper. ·
“I want you to go away. Out of Westport.”
“I have ten men h
ere, all armed . . .”
Bannerman corrected him with a patient shake of his head. “Them too, Palmer. Have Gary Russo here in one hour. Then you can all leave quietly.”
“You . . . you're crazy.”
“Go to the Marriott Hotel in Stamford. Wait in the lobby for my call. I'll tell you where you can pick up your relatives, what my plans are for Westport, and why you should try very hard to accept them.”
“You really are insane, aren't you? You're as crazy as . . .”
“Billy McHugh,” Paul said pointedly, finishing Reid's sentence. “Goodbye, Palmer.”
There were only six agents being processed through the Greenfield Hill Clinic and the Westport community, including the two Paul had seen in the blue jumpsuits. The other four were functioning normally outside. The number was a relief. According to Janet Herzog, who was now in Westport with the rest of them, as many as twenty might be in any of these halfway towns at a given time. Paul found the files on the six who were there. Russo was evaluating them now. With his own people, that brought the total number to eighteen. The two in the jumpsuits were doubtful. He might have to make other arrangements for them. On the other hand, neither seemed much more damaged than Billy McHugh.
The dummy corporation that Roger Clew had mentioned was called The Greenfield Foundation, logically enough, and it owned an impressive array of local real estate. Paul would need operating control of it.
Palmer Reid, his family members released unharmed, was in a cold fury when he called.
“I will grind you down,” he said.
“You still have Wilmette and the others,’* Paul told him. “Count your blessings.” Part of that was bluff. Paul could not yet name the remaining halfway towns but Reid had no way of knowing that.
He listened, eyes closed, as Reid vented his rage with sputtered threats and dire predictions. At last he interrupted, suggesting that he be allowed to summarize the situation. Paul then patiently listed all the legal and extralegal measures that were available to Reid, explained why each would fail, and how he, Bannerman, would respond even to the failures. Most of his responses, he pointed out, would necessarily involve killing because—short of going public about these six towns, which, he presumed, neither of them wanted— killing was all that would be left to them.
“Incidentally,” Paul told him, “I'll need to be named executive director of The Greenfield Foundation, with full power of attorney.”
“You have the gall to suggest that?” Reid was sputtering again.
“You can certainly refuse. But then I'll take the three million and set up my own corporation. On the other hand, if you give me control over yours, you can still pretend that I answer to you. You can say I'm running a new experiment on your behalf.”
“What sort of experiment?”
“We're all going to stay here. We took a vote.”
“For how long?”
“We'll see. If they can function well here, and they're content to stay, there doesn't seem to be much point in uprooting them after a year or so. If the experiment works, you might think about trying it elsewhere.”
Reid was silent for a long moment. Bannerman could almost hear the workings of his mind. First would come the reflex rejection of Bannerman's given word. What was he really up to? How did he plan to use these people? Then, last, he would explore the possibility that Bannerman might actually be telling the truth.
“You intend to establish them permanently?” Reid asked. “In Westport?”
“That's what I said, Palmer.”
“How many?”
“I'm afraid that's a secret.”
“Might I ask . . . why they would agree to this?”
“They suspect that you'll try to retire them as well, Palmer. I think they feel safer if we all retire together.”
“Paul. . . .” Another long silence. “On the remotest chance that you're serious about this, and that you have no ulterior motive, can you possibly believe that Westport can absorb that wolf pack of yours without getting eaten?”
Though Bannerman chose not to acknowledge it, Reid had a point. True, they'd been functioning as a group for years, most of them, and true, their habit of mutual support was well ingrained, but they weren't exactly the Junior League. It remained to be seen how soon the fun of having stolen Palmer Reid's town would wear thin.
“Listen,” Paul told him. “You go ahead and think this over. I know you'll try to hit us one way or the other so go ahead and do that, too. I'll hit back and then we'll both know where we stand. After that, maybe we can stop the foolishness before too many people get hurt.”
Reid, predictably, tested Paul's resolve although not until he was newly incensed by still another outrage. A report reached him that Anton Zivic was seen moving freely about Westport, representing himself as a dealer in art and antiques. Zivic's file showed that he had indeed been a collector and knew his subject, Italian Renaissance in particular. Reid gave orders to kidnap him. The team he sent for that purpose was found the next day in an automobile trunk in Norwalk, both men alive, but barely. Paul called Reid to tell him where the car was parked.
Some months later, two more men came to Westport for the purpose of assassinating Paul. They came by boat, docking at Westport's Saugatuck Yacht Club, secure in the belief that two extra pleasure boaters were unlikely to be noticed in a town that was full of them. They died aboard their boat, victims of a fuel explosion that was ruled accidental. To drive the message home, Palmer Reid's new Grand Banks trawler was simultaneously destroyed by fire while berthed at the Chesapeake Yacht Club in Annapolis, Maryland.
During the two and half years that followed, Reid retreated into attempts at surveillance, though only from a distance. He tried to put pressure on Paul and his people through other government agencies. But they, with the exception of Anton Zivic and Harry Bauer, were American citizens. They were paying their taxes, apparently breaking no laws, were wanted for no crime and made no attempt to disguise their identities. As for Zivic and Bauer, the State Department suggested, infuriatingly, that Reid mind his own business.
During those two and a half years, though Paul kept his people well prepared for further attacks, none came. None of Reid's men had even dared step within Westport's borders. Not until the arrival of Doug Poole.
John Waldo met Anton Zivic at the door of Gary Russo's home and office. Waldo gestured over his shoulder toward a closed examining room where, Zivic presumed, the unfortunate young man would be strapped to a table.
“Have you begun questioning him?” Zivic asked.
“Ask me,” Waldo answered, “I think we're finished. His name is Douglas Poole, he works for Robert Loftus. Loftus is Reid's top guy in the field.”
Zivic heard a female voice coming from the examining room. “Why is he here? And who is in there with him?”
“Molly and Billy were here already. Molly brought him for his sinuses. As for the kid, all he knows is Loftus told him to keep an eye on Paul except he shouldn't leave his car. Before that they were in New York tailing Susan Lesko's father and a guy named Donovan but the kid doesn't know why. He doesn't even know there's a daughter to go with the father.”
“He's been here not ten minutes. How did you get all that so quickly?”
“We couldn't shut him up. The kid's a fan.”
”A fan.” Zivic's expression went blank.
“Like in gee whiz. Like in golly. The second he recognizes Molly and Billy it was like he keeps a scrapbook. It was disgusting. By him, it was an honor I cold-cocked him.”
The door opened. Molly stepped out, grinning broadly.
“What is happening now?” Zivic asked.