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The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series)

Page 34

by Maxim, John R.


  Loftus shook his head.

  Then he closed his eyes.

  CHAPTER 20

  Monday morning. Chevy Chase, Maryland.

  As Palmer Reid's limousine paused at the electric gates leading to his sprawling Tudor house, he glared over the driver's shoulder toward the windows of his study. He'd ordered Whitlow to wait for him there.

  Reid was seething. He had just endured an entire Sunday at Fort Meade, well into the night, attending an unimaginably soporific seminar on advances in cryptography, filling a notebook with phrases that meant less to him than doodles—“Digital Applications of Junction Technology,” “Analog Optical Computing,” and, most arcane of all, “Magnetic Bubble Memory”—for the sole and specific purpose of remaining plausibly isolated from the weekend's events in New York's Westchester County.

  “Leave everything to me, sir,” Whitlow had said.

  Leave everything to me, sir, indeed.

  That morning, he had no sooner opened his copy of The Washington Post over breakfast when a sealed note had arrived from Whitlow, urging him to call home at once. He did, Whitlow answered, and then Whitlow played for him two messages that had accumulated on his answering machine. There on the machine, for anyone, including household staff, to hear, was a message from one Glenn Cook promising that he would shoot the eyes out of any other Palmer Reid agent who appeared within a block of the Raymond Lesko residence. Then, not two hours later, a message from that pup, Roger Clew, saying, “You're not awfully good at returning calls, Palmer, so I'll tell you what this one's about. It's to ask what you know about the murder of Buzz Donovan last Friday in New York. It's also to tell you that if anything should happen to a man named Lesko or to any citizen currently living in Westport, Connecticut, I'm going to be all over you like a fucking rug.”

  Reid slammed the phone down and called for his car. It took all of the thirty-minute ride to Chevy Chase for his blood pressure to reach an acceptable level.

  Roger Clew, he fumed. The gall of the man. Paul Bannerman's lackey. Now his protector. Imagine such a man rising to a position of responsibility in the State Department. Imagine him practically accusing Palmer Reid of complicity in a murder. Imagine him referring to Bannerman and his crowd as citizens.

  Whitlow, his expression more pinched than usual, opened Reid's front door as the car pulled up. Reid strode past him without a word and walked directly to his study, where he replayed both messages, his color again rising.

  “This Cook,” he said, pressing the erase button, “He's the marksman, isn't he? One of Bannerman's killers?”

  “Yes, sir.” Whitlow told him about the sniper episode on Lesko's street. Whitlow had, in fact, he informed Reid, made contingency plans for Lesko's removal should Lesko become troublesome, but they had not been acted upon. “The point is that Bannerman is protecting Lesko, which can only mean that you've been right, sir. They've been in league all along.”

  “And now they've somehow enlisted Loftus,” Reid stared.

  “It would seem so, sir.” There was that call from Lesko to Loftus's wife. There was Loftus showing inappropriate concern about the Donovan matter. There was Loftus a bit too anxious to provide Lesko with an alibi for the murder of Thomas Burdick. “Sir,” Whitlow grasped his knees, “I'm afraid we've had some additional losses.”

  Reid closed his eyes. “Report, Charles,” he said stiffly.

  Whitlow told him of a call that had come while Reid was en route from Fort Meade. The bodies of Gorby and Burns were discovered that morning in the kitchen of the Pollard house. Moreover, both Loftus and his young assistant appeared to have vanished. The physical evidence at the scene—specifically, broken teeth and spattered blood that did not seem to be either Burns's or Gorby's—suggested that they may have disposed of Loftus and perhaps Poole as well before being killed in retaliation. That, however, was by no means certain.

  Reid's eyes remained closed. “By Bannerman's people?” he asked.

  “It would seem so, sir.”

  “Charles…?' 'It was a wonder, thought Reid, that he had any stomach lining left at all.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Leave everything to you, Charles. Is that what you said?”

  “Sir, I could hardly have anticipated. . . .”

  Reid raised a hand, waved it, then used it to cover his brow. Three of his men dead, he thought. Two more men, dead if he's lucky, captured or gone over to the enemy if he is not. A lunatic with a rifle threatening him on his home telephone. A State Department undersecretary doing the same. That old fool Donovan, avenged three times over, perhaps by Bannerman's people, perhaps by this Raymond Lesko who is, by all accounts, only slightly less of a berserker than Billy McHugh. Bannerman off to Switzerland, not a care in the world, very possibly to have a nice long chat with Elena.

  “Charles…” he lowered his hand, “do you sense that we might have lost some initiative during your brief stewardship?”

  “No, sir,” Whitlow's chin came up. “Not entirely.”

  “Reassure me, Charles.”

  “You asked me to arrange a distraction for Bannerman. I have done so. It is a diversionary attack through a third party. If all goes well, we'll have Bannerman's people, Elena's people and Raymond Lesko all killing each other within three days.”

  “An attack upon whom, Charles?”

  Whitlow hesitated. He had taken pains to place at least two layers of insulation between Reid and the event. “Are you certain you want to know, sir?”

  “Yes, Charles,” your recent success rate considered. “What sort of attack would bring that happy result?”

  “Upon the girl, sir.”

  “The girl,” Reid repeated blankly.

  “Lesko's daughter. She's going to die.”

  On the Capitol Beltway, three miles north of Palmer Reid's house, Molly Farrell pulled into a rest stop and coasted to a small bank of pay phones. Janet Herzog, wearing a spandex jogging suit and red sneakers, dozed in the passenger seat with a towel over her face to block out the low morning sun. Molly stepped out of the car, closed the door quietly, and walked to the nearest phone.

  Janet's jogging suit and sneakers, like Billy McHugh's black woolens, were her working clothes. Upon first arriving in Westport and observing the early morning stream of joggers on almost every residential street, she quickly concluded that her kit would not be complete without a jogging outfit of her own. In Westport, and possibly the whole Northeast for all she knew, a jogging suit was ideal for scouting neighborhoods while seeming to belong there. Even better, she realized, no one in the suburbs ever so much as turned around at the slow slap of jogging shoes approaching from the rear or gave a second thought to why the woman passing had a towel tied over her head. Somewhere, someday, those footsteps would be the last sounds someone heard on earth.

  Molly punched out Anton Zivic's number using a credit card. At the second ring, he picked up and said his name.

  “It's me,” she said. “We're finished here.”

  “No difficulties?” he asked.

  “We could have slept in his bed. He just got home an hour ago.” Enough time, she thought, to have buried a bug so deep they'd have to tear down walls to find it. Even a TV camera. That would have been nice. But Anton had told her not to risk leaving any sign that his home had been penetrated.

  “How is he behaving?”

  “He's getting spooked.” She told him about the calls from Glenn and Roger Clew that were on his machine.

  Janet was still in the house when Whitlow played them and then called Reid home from Fort Meade. She left by a back door as Reid arrived at the front. She went jogging. Thirty minutes later, two cars, each bearing two of Reid's men, arrived and took up sentry positions along both approaches to his house. Janet jogged past both of them, slowing to scowl suspiciously, as any local matron should, at the sight of strange men sitting low in their cars. On her second pass she brazenly stopped to ask one driver what business he had on her street. He wearily flashed a badge, inviting he
r to call the police if she felt she must. Both men, she noted, wore flak jackets and were armed with nothing heavier than machine pistols.

  “Glenn will keep an eye on the house?” Zivic asked.

  “Yes.”

  Molly smiled to herself. Glenn had already gone to the local humane society where he had bought a dog. Although he appreciated Janet's approach in principle, Glenn Cook hated jogging. The same result could be achieved by walking a dog, with the added pleasure of watching it urinate against the tires of surveillance vehicles.

  “Janet and I are heading home.”

  “I have a request of you. It is compassionate in nature and therefore strictly voluntary.” Anton outlined the events at the Pollard house the night before. He gave her the address of a home in Arlington, Virginia. “The woman's name is Katherine. There are two children.”

  “How much can I tell her?”

  “You have the number of the clinic?”

  Reid's phony dryout hospital in Westport. “Yes.”

  “Call it from Arlington. Her husband will tell her.”

  During the winter months the Orient Express reaches Zurich an hour before dawn. It then turns southeast toward the town of Landquart, where passengers bound for Klosters and St. Moritz connect with the red cars of the Swiss Mountain Railway, while the Orient Express continues on toward Austria.

  Paul had asked Andrew to bring their breakfast tray at seven. That left them an hour to dress and pack, then sit sipping coffee as the sun rose over the still-distant Alps, bringing the color of the sky to the string of lakes that followed the tracks for most of the journey.

  At Landquart, despite Andrew's suggestion that they wait in the warmth of their cabin until their luggage was brought from the baggage car, Susan dragged Paul onto the platform, where she breathed deeply of the Alpine air, grinning happily at the realization that she was actually, finally, in Switzerland.

  She searched the windows of the train, hoping to wave good-bye to the Basses or to any of the other passengers they'd met since leaving London. But only three or four faces appeared. It was still early, the morning was cold, and the beds in the cabins were warm. A few others disembarked in scattered pairs. Susan wondered aloud where they were heading. Paul told her they would all be going to St. Moritz. She was about to ask him how he knew that but she could see it now. The St. Moritz passengers had twice their luggage, mostly Gucci or Louis Vuitton. All of the women and some of the men wore expensive furs. Two of the women had already dressed in designer ski outfits and one wore matching earrings. Neither, from what Susan could see, had bothered to bring skis.

  A soft gong signaled the arrival of the Klosters train. Susan and Paul shook hands with Andrew, gave a final wave to the Orient Express, and hauled their suitcases, ski bags and boot bags aboard for the one-hour climb into the Parsenn range. Through most of the ride, her excitement fought a losing battle with the altitude, and she struggled to keep from dozing. The snow seemed deeper with each passing mile. A two-foot mantle of white crowned every farmhouse and chalet. A fragile lacing on branches and wires said that fresh snow had fallen during the night. By the time they reached Klosters, two feet had grown to three.

  Arriving there, as they passed their bags to the platform, Paul noticed a Swiss police-cruiser parked at the station. Two uniformed officers sipped coffee from steaming cups. Glancing around him, he saw that no other passengers had gotten off at Klosters. He also saw, inside the glass doors of the waiting room, a man in a fleece-lined coat and fur hat who stood idly gazing out onto the platform. The presence of the police, and of the man, did not alarm Paul. He simply noticed them. Nor were they taking any particular notice of him. Still, he wondered. He stepped to a large yellow board captioned Abfahrt Klosters and looked to see how soon the next train would be coming from either direction. There would be none for almost an hour. Now he wondered what the man in the fur hat could be waiting for. He glanced once more toward the policemen, then, looking out upon the main street, began scanning to see whether any more of the locals seemed to have time on their hands. A white blur, a snowball thrown hard, whizzed past his face. Susan. He turned, in a half crouch, expecting to see her packing another one. What he saw was Susan, hands on her hips, with a look on her face that said “You cut that out. Right now.”

  Paul, with an expression of injured innocence, claimed that he was only considering whether to show her around the village then or later. Their apartment was a hundred yards in one direction; the village center, half that distance in the other. They could take a walk through town, put some life back into their legs, then pick up their bags on the way back. “Good thinking,’ she said. Fast thinking, she thought. But she took his arm and steered him toward the main street. Within less than a minute, the village of Klosters swept the incident from her mind.

  Klosters, or at least the village center, was barely two New York City blocks from end to end. Towering mountains seemed to rise in every direction, their lower slopes dotted with private homes and apartments well into the tree line. Every building, new or old, was done in some variation of the chalet style; carved wooden balconies on every floor, flower boxes at every shuttered window, roofs gently pitched to hold the snow. The guidebooks she'd read described Klosters as a quaint Alpine village that had managed to keep its charm. That was true enough from a distance, she supposed, but not from up close. The place had the look of money. She counted four banks, enough for a town ten times this size, each with the exchange rates of all major currencies posted in its window and each posting stock prices from the various world markets. There were two jewelry stores displaying Rolex and Patek Philippe watches,

  some priced at more than she'd pay for a car. And each of the five ski-clothing shops displayed modish outfits whose cost would dress her for an entire season.

  The people, however, were different. No one on the street seemed dressed for show. Most wore ski clothing that looked well-used and functional. Everyone looked fit and relaxed, and nearly everyone smiled and nodded as they passed. If they had money it was quiet money. Like the town itself, except for a few store windows, there was no neon about them, nothing that shouted. What Klosters seemed, more than anything to Susan, was safe. She repeated the word to herself. Perhaps it was the wall of mountains that made this place seem so like a womb.

  She thought of Paul. He was walking at her side. Leaving her to her thoughts. She wondered if she would have thought of Klosters as safe if she had come here with anyone but him. Or if she'd never known him. Paul did seem to like safe places. Windermere Island, for example. Westport, for example. Even his condominium there. Guarded. Hard to reach.

  Hold it, she told herself. Now you cut it out. Everyone here has a buck or two. And everyone here has made his own comfortable little world someplace. Paul's no different. Don't start.

  “Beg pardon?” he put an arm across her shoulders.

  She looked up at him questioningly.

  “You've been talking to yourself.” he said.

  “Have I? I have not.”

  “My mistake.”

  “What did I say?”

  “Safe. You said it three times.”

  She shrugged. “Doesn't it strike you that way. This place, I mean?”

  “You may not think so when you see some of the runs” ,

  “You know what I mean. Down here.”

  “I suppose. Now that you mention it.”

  Paul looked away. But he had to smile. They'd just passed a jewelry store window where, a few years back, two young backpackers, Dutch kids, decided to finance their travels by pulling a midnight smash-and-grab at the Rolex display, probably too stoned to remember that almost every Swiss male was an army reservist and all of them kept NATO rifles in their hall closets. The two young men barely got fifty feet from the jewelry store before they were bracketed by automatic-weapons fire from half a dozen different balconies. Paul was sure they'd never have made it out of Klosters in any case. This was a valley town, with just one road in or out, easil
y sealed at either end. That's why Britain's royal family came here to ski. Security's easy. No reasonable hope of escape if you came with bad intentions. It was also why Carla Benedict moved to nearby Davos a few years back after some East Germans—whom Billy eventually discouraged—had put a hundred-thousand-dollar price on her head.

  The station was just ahead, their baggage where they left it, the two policemen gone. So was the man in the waiting room. He had not followed them. Paul was sure of that. Probably just someone who stopped in to get warm. Speaking of that, he thought, the temperature felt like it was dropping. The air smelled of new snow. He stepped up to a weather station mounted on the outside wall near the glass doors. Temperature —2 Celsius. Barometer falling sharply, edging down to where it said sturm in Germanic script. He looked at the sky.

 

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