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The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series)

Page 30

by Maxim, John R.

Lesko hesitated, then realized he was doing so. “I'd appreciate that,” he said. He told her where Susan would be staying.

  As he replaced the receiver, his expression distant, he turned toward Robert Loftus and saw a look of amused amazement on the other man's face.

  “What's with you?” he scowled.

  “What's with me?” Loftus shook his head as if to clear it. “What's with you and Elena?”

  Lesko threw him his coat. “Come on. We're leaving.”

  “You're blushing, Lesko. I'm fucked if you're not blushing.”

  “No, asshole, it's called getting mad.”

  “You see Elena exactly once, you shoot everybody around her, and now you look like you want to ask her to your Junior Prom.”

  Lesko looked for something else to throw. Instead he snatched up his own coat. “You got a car outside?”

  “Around the block, yeah.”

  “Let's go. You're driving me to Scarsdale.”

  “Talking to you is one thing, Lesko. But once they see us together, I'm dead.”

  “You're going to show me how to get inside. The talking's over.”

  Susan hated to leave London, having seen so little of it, but was even more reluctant to cut into her three weeks in the Swiss Alps. We'll come back, Paul promised her. If you get tired of skiing, or if we get some bad weather, we can always fly back and wait it out. Can we really? Anything you like, Paul told her.

  But one fantasy at a time. Here it was Sunday morning and, dressed in their costumes from Harrods, Susan and Paul entered Victoria Station and followed the signs to the waiting Orient Express. Other passengers had already arrived, their heads turning toward each new arrival, cameras ready for those who came in 20's dress and for any celebrities that might appear. Several passengers snapped Susan's picture. Paul grinned grotesquely into several lenses until Susan noticed and jammed her elbow into his ribs.

  The Orient Express was actually not one train but two. One for the English leg of the trip, the other for the longer continental portion. The first, called the British Pullman, was entirely made up of vintage dining cars, their exteriors painted in tones of brown and cream which gave them an antique sepia look. On the inside, however, each car had its own distinctive design and history dating from the late 20's. Paul had chosen a car that had been a particular favorite of Winston Churchill's who had used it to entertain visiting heads of state. A steward seated them in upholstered wing chairs facing a table set for lunch. Champagne was poured at once. A light lunch of Scottish salmon was served as the train whispered through the Kentish countryside toward the Channel port of Folkestone.

  Arriving at Folkestone, the British Pullman eased onto a long jetty extending out over the tidal basin and delivered them within yards of a British Ferry the size of a small cruise ship. Once aboard, they were escorted to the vessel's first class lounge. Paul steered Susan to the port side of the lounge and a booth which offered the clearest view of the Channel coast and the white cliffs of Dover.

  Their fellow passengers, who had thus far been speaking in hushed voices as they might in a museum, enlivened considerably with the service of tea and cocktails on board the ship. Most gravitated toward the sound of their own language in search of kindred traveling companions. Obvious honeymooners endured cooing questions and surreptitious snapshots before escaping to the promenade deck. A group of luxury train hobbyists began arguing the merits of the Orient Express versus Spain's equally fabled Andalusian Express.

  The passengers, Susan guessed from the accents she'd overheard, were about one third American and another third British, the rest being a mix of other European nationalities. About one woman in five was in some sort of 20 s costume including a few that were genuine antiques and several that appeared to be designer originals commissioned for the occasion. Most were, like her own, made up of selected accessories, such as the one worn by the woman from Harrods who, with the man from the Grosvenor lobby on her arm, was now crossing the lounge in their general direction.

  “Hello there.” The woman's eyes lit up in sudden recognition. “You two mind if we share your booth?”

  Paul stood as the man extended his hand. “Name's Ray Bass,” he said. ‘This here's my wife Caroline.” Caroline offered her hand in turn. “Seein’ as how we've run into each other all over London,” she smiled, “seems time we met.”

  Susan liked the Basses instinctively. It pleased her that Paul, normally shy among strangers, seemed entirely comfortable with them as well. The first few minutes of conversation showed Ray and Caroline to be outgoing, warm, enthusiastic and down-home funny. Down home, as it turned out, was Lumberton, Mississippi where they owned a pecan farm and New Orleans where they kept a town house. Questioning them, Paul learned that the Basses took two or three vacations a year, the most recent being to China, not counting occasional weekend theater trips to New York. For all their easy charm, however, Susan could not help being mildly disappointed that the first new people she met were Americans. Caroline Bass seemed to read her mind.

  “Truth be told,” she drawled, “I sorta hoped you'd be English. Lady Twiddlethorpe or some such. And this handsome feller would be James Bond even if he does wear bowls of chips on his head in hotel lobbies. On the other hand, I know you didn't come on the Orient Express just to meet a couple of Mississippi farmers.”

  “See?” Susan nudged Paul. “James Bond. Everyone thinks you look mysterious.”

  ”Um, I think the word Caroline used was ‘silly.’ ”

  “What line are you in, Paul?” Ray Bass asked.

  “I'm a spy,” he deadpanned.

  “Oh, good,” Caroline clapped her hands. “And you're on a caper, right?”

  “Darlin’,” Ray corrected her. “Detectives have capers. Spies have missions.”

  “Well, whatever it is, what is it?”

  Paul leaned close, dropping his voice. “I could tell you. But then of course I'd have to kill you. Suffice it to say that civilization as we know it depends on my getting the formula to my contacts in Switzerland before midnight tomorrow.”

  “That's if you can get past the KGB, of course,” Ray offered.

  “No problem. Susan here will use her body to distract them.”

  “Paul . . “ Susan punched his leg.

  “Hey, this is gettin' good,” Caroline said in a stage whisper. “Do you know which ones they are?”

  “The honeymooners,” Paul nodded gravely. “No one ever suspects honeymooners.”

  “Makes sense,” Ray Bass agreed. “They can disappear for hours at a time and folks'd figure they're off gettin' acquainted. But how does Susan here get rid of the bride long enough to use her wiles on the groom?”

  “My department. On top of being mysterious, I'm also a great lover.”

  “Oh, brother,” Susan rolled her eyes. She'd asked for it.

  In Lesko's Queens bedroom a six-hour time change earlier, David Katz was yelling at him.

  “Dumb, Lesko. You're a real putz, you know that? You call me stupid. You want to know what's world-class stupid?”

  “It really wasn't very wise, Ray.'' Donovan now. Complete with his Gallagher's table, which was now in Lesko's bedroom. “How on earth could you trust a woman who'd order poor David's head blown off? Just look at him. He doesn't even have a face anymore. ”

  Katz started to rant some more but Donovan's words made him stop. “No, look,“ he said to Donovan. “I got a face. I got it back. ”

  To Donovan, if not to Katz, this was an irrelevancy. “Whether you have or haven't is not what's at issue here. The issue is whether Ray should have told Elena where Susan and Paul Bannerman are staying.”

  “What's the big deal?” Lesko heard himself asking. “For two years now, Elena couldn't have looked Susan up in the phone book if she wanted?”

  “I'm not sure it's the same as having Susan more or less in her clutches.”

  Lesko didn't even want to think that way. He was getting annoyed. “Elena's okay, all right? She found Jesus or some
thing. Leave her alone. ”

  “That's real nice, Lesko,“ Katz sulked. “Me and Buzz are . . . passed on, but do you give a shit? Nah! Forgive and forget, right? Why don't you and Elena go fucking dancing? You can go out for a couple of shots of tequila schnapps or whatever the hell Swiss-Bolivians drink. ”

  “Just a minute.” Donovan was tugging at Katz's cashmere. “What was that about ‘passing on'?”

  “Don 't pay any attention, ” Lesko told him. “He gets all out of joint when you say he's dead.”

  “Yes, but he included me as well. I'm certainly not dead if I'm sitting here speaking to you. ”

  “Oh, Christ,” Lesko muttered disgustedly. He started to roll over but Elena, who was in bed with him, and still wearing her mink coat for some reason, rubbed his back affectionately and said, “Don't you pay any attention either. It is something they must work out between themselves.”

  “While they're at it,” said Loftus, sitting atop the clothes dryer, which was also now in Lesko's bedroom, “they can figure out how Burdick got dead, too. And if you didn 't do it, Lesko, who did?”

  Oh, yeah. Burdick. Lesko remembered now. They'd driven to this big house in Scarsdale. Loftus snuck up in the dark to short out the alarm system. Then he comes back, spooked and sweating, saying someone already rigged a bypass on it. Loftus wants to bag it but Lesko went in anyway. The only light on the first floor was from a TV that no one was watching. But there were lights on upstairs and he could hear the sound of a shower running. Quietly, Lesko followed his gun up the stairs to the bathroom where he finds a stiff on the floor of this big shower stall, legs twisted under him, his face in the stream of water. It was just like they found Donovan except this guy was fully dressed and he had a .38 jammed between his teeth and a hole through his head. There was a bigger hole higher up, blasted into the tile. The guy's brains were still dripping down the wall in pink streaks.

  Lesko went back out for Loftus and made him come look. Loftus said it was Burdick and now he's really spooked, which seems funny considering that the whole point of coming up here was to make Reid and Burdick dead. Loftus seems to want to believe that Lesko had done it even when Lesko pointed out that there had been no gunshot and no time to do this either unless Loftus thought he just happened to surprise Burdick while he was taking a shower with his clothes on. Next, Loftus wanted to know who Lesko had talked to when he went up to Westport the day before. Lesko asked what the hell that had to do with anything.

  “Did you tell anyone there about Donovan being dead in his shower?”

  “No, shithead. I didn't even know about Donovan then. ” Anyway, the only people he'd talked to at all were a nosy librarian, an I've-seen-everything type bartender, plus maybe the guy at the Avis rental. But hearing that didn't make Loftus any happier.

  “Okay,” said Katz, leaning between them. “Let's look at the possibilities. “They were not in Lesko's bedroom anymore. They were in Loftus's car, and Katz and Donovan had joined them in the back seat. Elena was gone. That depressed Lesko because he didn't know when she'd ever climb into his bed again, and the least he should have done was take the opportunity to talk things out. “Killing Burdick,” Katz continued, “was definitely a revenge hit for Buzz here, right?”

  “Or made to look like one,” Donovan suggested.

  “Let's keep things simple here, all right? Forget you 're a fucking lawyer. ”

  “So talk,” Lesko said.

  “Buzz was making calls to Washington about Reid and Bannerman. Then suddenly he's zapped.” Katz threw an apologetic shrug at Donovan for his use of the word. “One possibility is Buzz's friends in Washington decided to even the score for him.”

  “No,” Donovan shook his head. “They're simply not that sort.”

  “Good, “said Katz. “That makes it simpler. All that's left is Bannerman. ”

  “Loftus?” Lesko asked. “What do you think?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Don't give me I don't know. Katz is right. If this whole thing is because Reid is afraid of Bannerman, who else could it be?”

  “Listen, I have other things on my mind, okay? I've got another one of my men who's six hours late reporting in. He's clean but he could be dead, too. I also have to get rid of all of you, then go back and go through the motions of finding Burdick's body and calling Reid so he doesn't know I'm part of this.”

  “Ray,“ Buzz Donovan touched his shoulder, “Hasn't Bannerman been in transit all this time?”

  “He could have heard about you when he got to London. He could have set this up by phone.”

  “But with whom?”

  Lesko hadn't thought of that. “Maybe he has friends of his own in the Fed.”

  “But Loftus says he's retired. He wants to be left alone. He's hardly likely to have a skilled assassin at his disposal. He's even less likely to have known that Burdick was the specific culprit”

  Loftus had a funny look. Lesko saw it. The look suggested that a revelation had struck him. Loftus got the same kind of look when Lesko told him he talked to a bartender in Westport. And Loftus says Reid is afraid to go to Westport, right? Afraid of one guy? Or does the guy have muscle up there?

  Funny looks.

  Looks.

  The bartender had a look. Like a cop's but not quite. The lady bartender, too. Lesko wanted to ask Loftus about these people but Loftus was suddenly driving away with Katz and Donovan still in the backseat. They must have dropped him off right at his bed because that's where he was.

  He rubbed his eyes.

  Shit!

  He didn't bother looking at his clock. He knew what time it would show. He did look at the side of the bed where Elena had been and immediately felt stupid for it.

  What was today?

  Sunday.

  Susan would be on that train somewhere. Probably safe enough. But it would be another whole day before he could give her a call. And before Elena could start keeping an eye on her.

  CHAPTER 18

  At Boulogne, on the coast of France, the blue-and-gold carriages of the Continental stood waiting on a track inside the terminal of the Channel ferry. At the entrance to each of the restored sleeping cars, a young steward, also in blue and gold, waited to show the passengers to their cabins. Paul and Susan's steward—his name was Andrew—handed Paul a cable message and directed him to a telephone kiosk just inside, cautioning him that the train would depart in fifteen minutes. It took Paul six of those minutes to get through to Anton Zivic.

  Zivic used another four to tell him about the bug on Susan's phone, his subsequent lunch with Doug Poole, Poole's revelation of the Donovan murder, and Zivic's decision to execute an immediate reprisal against Palmer Reid's man, Burdick. Anton, knowing that public phones at border points are sometimes tapped, kept his language as obscure as possible while still conveying the sense of what had occurred. A man had died, Paul understood, and now another, because Palmer Reid imagined a conspiracy between himself and Susan's father.

  “Do you think the father is in danger?”

  “I will see to him,” Anton promised. “But you be careful. Perhaps the reprisal scared the Old Man off but perhaps not. With your permission, I would like to send Mama's Boy some traveling companions.”

  “No. Absolutely not.” Paul couldn't bear the thought of it. “Colonel, you might give our friend at State a call. Have him ask the Old Man why these two are dead. The question alone should be enough to make him put his activities on hold. Otherwise, use your own judgment. Don't feel you have to consult with me.”

  A brief silence on the line. Paul instantly regretted having said that. Anton was right to alert him and he was not a man who needed hand-holding.

  “There is another reason for this contact,” Anton told him. “The bartender is anxious that you know he acted on my authority.”

 

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