Bannerman's Law

by John R. Maxim

  She had believed him about the children as well. Otherwise, where were they, he would ask. She had no answer. The only child she ever saw back then, older than a newborn, was Victor Dunville’ little boy, Carleton. She saw him, from time to time, playing on the lawn. He had dark hair. And he cried a lot. He seemed very much like the baby she remembered. But it seemed to her that if that child had been her own, she would have some sort of feeling for him. She had none. She rather disliked him, especially after he had grown to adulthood and seemed to have been put in charge of things. If he tried to talk to her she would blink him off. Soon, she stopped even writing.

  She never quite knew what had become of Victor Dunville. Harland said he died of an addiction to morphine but Harland was always saying things. He also said that the psychiatrist had been murdered after a quarrel with Carleton Dunville, and some agreed, but the new psychiatrist said he had retired to live in Hawaii. And then Carle-ton had a son. Or at least one appeared. No one even realized that the elder Carleton was married.

  More years passed. Members came and went. Their overall number decreased steadily. Whole floors were given over to the Dunvilles' special guests. Harland said once that there had been a war and that some of them were German war criminals in hiding. That seemed especially silly to Nellie. She imagined that the last place where Germans would hide is in the country that defeated them.

  Harland could be quite insistent about the things he claimed, especially where her supposed four children were concerned. He said that he heard them cry. Well? Where are they then? He said that they're probably Dunvilles now. Perhaps even D'Arcontes. You see? There you have it. She would have paid him no mind except for the dreams. They came less frequently but they never stopped. Especially about the little girl with the birthmark and the red hair tied in little green ribbons. The one she thought she saw again when that nice girl, Lisa, came to visit.

  Perhaps Lisa would find her.

  Perhaps Alan and Barbara would help.

  20

  Carla Benedict had stood for twenty minutes inside the front entrance of the Beverly Hills Hotel hoping that the silver Honda would appear.

  There could be no doubt that it had been following her. It had made a U-turn on Rodeo Drive too quickly for her to get a clear look at the driver and another southbound car had immediately blocked her view of its license plate. She thought that she might have seen it once more, several blocks behind, as she approached Will Rogers Park but, if so, it had broken off once more. She could only proceed to the hotel, a logical destination given her heading, and see if it approached looking for a blue Chevrolet among the Lotuses and Lamborghinis.

  She was reasonably sure that its solo occupant was not a policeman. He might have been a reporter who, having seen her at Lisa's apartment, decided to see where she was staying and try for an interview later, and then lost his nerve when he realized she'd spotted him. She hoped not. She wanted to believe it was someone who had reason to be wary of her. Someone who could answer a question or two about why Lisa's apartment had been burglarized. And he would have answered. One way or another, he would have answered. But she saw no sign of that car. She went to the front desk and asked for her messages.

  “Miss Benedict?”

  She turned at the sound of her name. A massive young man, late twenties, in an ugly sport jacket, shirt too tight, pale skin, bad haircut, stood grinning, nodding, in the manner of a shy schoolboy. Her eyes narrowed. At first she did not recognize him.

  “It's Yuri,” he said, tapping his chest. “Yuri Rykov.”

  If nothing else, she knew the voice. Slavic yet soft. Too high for his bulk. Still, it seemed impossible. Not in California. Certainly not in the Beveríy Hills Hotel.

  He saw the light come into her eyes. He bent closer. “You know who was here?” he whispered. “Jane Fonda.”

  Her head moved slowly sideways. He took it to suggest doubt.

  “It is true. One hour ago. Look.” He reached into his pocket and produced a book of matches which he held very carefully. “Here.” The grin returned. “She wrote her name for me.”

  Carla began to weep.

  His face fell. Lieutenant Yuri Rykov, aide to Colonel Leo Belkin of the First Chief Directorate, KGB, did not know what to do. She brought a hand to her mouth, her chest heaved. He stepped closer, placing his great hands around her shoulders, awkwardly, his eyes nervously scanning the lobby. He did not so much embrace her as attempt to conceal her. He would not have imagined that the famous Carla Benedict, whose autograph he also had and treasured, could so lose possession of herself.

  He felt her trying to regain control. She was holding her breath, then breathing deeply. One hand, holding message slips, gripped his belt. The other crushed the lapel of his jacket. He did not mind. But people were looking. They would smile and look away, satisfied that there was no unpleasantness here, only, perhaps, an emotional encounter between loved ones. Still, he did not think it appropriate that Carla Benedict be seen like this.

  Carla didn't care. Nor did it matter to her, for the moment, what the KGB was doing in Los Angeles or why Yuri had been there waiting for her. She knew only that his was the first friendly face she had seen in two days, not counting that of Molly Farrell. She had not seen him since their first meeting, more than a year now, when he wore the uniform of a limousine chauffeur and had helped smuggle a wounded Paul Bannerman back into Westport after the Marbella mission. No, there was one other time. He and Belkin had come back to Westport. They met with Paul and Anton. She was not invited. But she saw him at Mario's afterward, devouring bacon cheeseburgers and reveling in the presence of Billy McHugh, John Waldo, Janet Herzog . . . names he had known and regarded with awe since he was a recruit.

  Under a different teacher, she supposed, he might have been taught to despise them. But Colonel Belkin insisted otherwise. These are consummate professionals, he said. The best of the best. Respect them, earn their respect and, in time, their trust. Then much can be accomplished. Belkin had freely admitted that this was his goal although he expressed it with considerably more reserve than his young aide who was, after two days in Westport, hopelessly star struck. And now, God help us, she thought, gathering herself, he has even met Jane Fonda.

  She took his hand, guiding him past the entrance to the Polo Lounge—tugging at him when he strained to look for celebrities inside—and toward the door leading to the bungalow path outside. She needed to get to a mirror, repair her face. He would not need to tell her why he'd been there waiting for her because, as she walked, she read the second of the two crushed message slips—the first being from her father. “Stay by your phone,” said the second. “Wait for Belkin or Rykov. Do not go out. Bannerman.”

  She blinked at it, curiously. It did not say please. The message conveyed none of Paul's usual warmth or politeness. He had instructed the operator to underline not. Paul, for some reason, had shed his skin. He was being the scarier Paul again. Which means, she assumed, that he's either learned something about Lisa's murder or, more likely, he's somehow heard about that mess at Lisa's apartment. Well, she shrugged, if she had to have a baby-sitter she could do worse than Yuri. He was a good-looking kid, tough but no goon, and some of Belkin's polish was bound to have rubbed off on him. She would take him back to her bungalow, check in with her father, get weepy again and then, with any luck, have him fucking her brains out within thirty minutes.

  Henry Dunville had been dozing. Hours had passed since Ruiz had last given him an injection for the pain.

  He was sitting upright, knees drawn, his back against the padded wall on a cot that was the only furniture in the basement isolation room where they had left him. He could not lie down. When he tried, his broken ribs screamed and he felt as if all the blood in his body was trying to squeeze out through his eyes.

  He heard the bolt being thrown. His head snapped up at the sound. The sudden motion made him cry out.

  “Who's there?” he choked. He tilted his head back as if he might see from be
neath the bandages.

  Carleton the elder winced at the sight. Over Henry's right eye, blood had soaked through and become caked. There was blood over the left eye as well but it was pinkish, still seeping. Pink tears flowed over his chin and onto his shirt. “It's your father, Henry,” he said.

  A great sob burst from his chest. More pink tears. “Father? Do you see? Do you see what that bitch did to me?”

  ”I see. Yes. I'm very sorry, Henry.”

  “That cunt. That fucking cunt.”

  The language caused Carleton the elder to stiffen. There was no excuse for it. “Henry ... try to remember who you are,” he said.

  Henry's mouth fell open. Here he was, like this, and his fucking father is talking about manners. He bit his lip. “I've got to get to a hospital,” he rasped. ”A real one that knows about eyes.”

  “You know that's impossible,” his father answered, not unkindly. “Even if they could help you, which they can't, how would we explain your condition?”

  “But they can help,” he cried. He tilted his head once more and pulled at the gauze covering his left cheek. ”I can see light,” he said. ”I can even see movement.”

  Carleton the elder stepped toward him. He fished the cheap revolver from his pocket and held it close to Henry's right eye. He waggled it. Henry gave no sign that he saw it. But the gun's mechanism made a faint clicking sound and Henry heard it.

  ”I saw that,” Henry lied. “See? You tested me and I saw it.”

  “What, Henry? What did you see?”

  “Listen,” he pleaded, his voice becoming desperate. “You could say that I'm a patient here. That I see visions or something. That I went out of my head and tried to blind myself.”

  “Henry . . . they'd want your records. I can't help you that way. They can't help you at all. Please accept that.”

  A wail began low in Henry's chest.

  “Oh, for heaven's sake,” his father muttered.

  Henry raised a hand. It said that he was gathering himself. He waited until his breath returned. “So what am I supposed to do?” he managed. “Stay here? Stay like this?”

  “You might. But you might also want to end your pain. Don't you think that might be better, Henry, all things considered?”

  ”Wha . . . you mean . . . ?”

  “Yes, Henry. I'm afraid I do.”

  “Oh. Oh, that's great. I'm like this and that's all you can think about? Henry the inconvenience. Henry who you never gave a shit about. You'd love that, wouldn't you, you bastard.”

  “No, Henry.” Carleton the elder eased himself onto the cot beside his son. He shifted the black revolver to his left hand. He placed his right hand on Henry's shoulder. “What I'd prefer,” he said, “is that none of this had happened. You do realize, don't you, that you brought it on yourself?”

  “What? This?” Henry touched his bandaged eyes. “For fucking one girl, you say I deserve thisT`

  Carleton the elder sighed audibly. But there was no use, he supposed, in further attempting to correct Henry's language. Nor did it seem useful to make Henry realize that it was not using the girl that led to his present unhappy state. It was killing her. So uselessly. Young Carleton was quite right. The girl had seen nothing that could not have been explained or denied.

  “Henry,” he said, massaging the fleshy shoulder of the younger man, “I'm afraid it's time to make a decision. I came down here intending to make it for you but . . . perhaps a more honorable way . . . ”

  “What about that woman? The one who did this to me?”

  “She . . . they . . . were not given the same choice, Henry. They died badly. They were cowards in the end.”

  The head came up. “You killed them?”

  ”I shot them, Henry. With the very pistol I'm holding in my hand. It should give you comfort to know that.”

  Henry Dunville was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly.

  “Your brother would be here ... he wanted to come . . . but he could not bear to see you like this. He's never been as strong as you are, Henry.”

  “Father . . . ” Henry Dunville held out his hand. “Leave the gun with me. Please.”

  Carleton the elder hesitated.

  “It's all right, Father. I'm ready now.”

  “Would you . . . like me to stay here with you?”

  “Yes. Very much. I would.”

  The hand gave his shoulder a final squeeze. Then it took his own hand. Henry felt the snub-nosed revolver being fitted into his fingers. He could smell the gun oil. Henry embraced it, bringing it slowly toward his mouth. He parted his lips, tasting it. The cot creaked. He felt his father leaning away from him to avoid soiling his suit. He imagined the look on his father's face. There would be no respect there. No pity or regret. It would be the look he'd have if he'd stepped in vomit.

  The gun, as he'd suspected, did not smell of being fired. His father, like his brother, knew nothing of guns. Axel Streicher would have taken it from him, rammed it down his throat. The Streichers were not dead. Why would they be? They were revenue. He was only Henry. Crop of 1955. Assigned to three different couples in ten years, each time returned when he was no longer needed. Or wanted.

  “Be strong, Henry.” His father's voice. A hint of impatience.

  “Father?”

  “I'm here, Henry.”

  “Fuck you, Father.” He jammed the black handgun against the elder Carleton's chest and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing.

  Henry roared, an animal sound. He tried again. Again, the hammer fell on an empty chamber.

  His father stood, breaking Henry's grip of his sleeve. Henry heard him sigh. Then he heard more sounds, a tugging against fabric and the double click of another handgun being cocked. Henry felt strangely calm.

  “I'll wait for you in hell, Father,” he said.

  He heard an intake of breath as if his father was about to say something. Like . . . Good-bye, Henry. You've disappointed me again, Henry. More likely, he knew, it was simply a holding of breath. Like when something smelled bad.

  “I'll have eyes then, Father. I'll be there waiting and I'll have two good—”

  He never finished.

  Yuri Rykov lay raised on one elbow, a sheet up to his hips, facing Carla. She was on her stomach. Her back, he noted, was finely muscled. No fat on her. No stretch marks or scars except for a thin line across her throat where someone long ago, she said, had tried to strangle her with wire.

  ”I want you to know,” Yuri said to her, dreamily, “how special this is to me. You do me a very great honor.”

  She purred as his fingers traced lightly over her back and buttocks.

  “Could I ask your permission ... ” He stopped himself. “No,” he said. “Never mind.”

  “What?” she asked, stretching languidly. “Tell me.”

  His fingers wandered down her side, brushing her flattened breast. They continued down to her slender waist.

  “You have an expression,” he said. “Kiss and tell. There is one like it in Russian. It is a bad thing to do but ... ”

  She chuckled.

  ”I think you know what I am asking. Is it so bad?”

  Carla shivered as the fingers found a nerve. He withdrew them. “Don't stop,” she said. “And yes, you have my permission.”

  She didn't mind. She thought it was rather sweet. This huge man, KGB, highly trained, certainly deadly when he had to be, but still, in many ways, a boy with a good heart. And like a boy, he wants to tell his friends that in Beverly Hills, California, he not only met Jane Fonda but boffed, twice so far, the famous Carla Benedict.

  “They will not believe me,” he said, wistfully, “but at least they will wonder. They did not even believe that Billy McHugh made a cheeseburger for me. He did, you know. With his own hands.”

  ”I know. I was there.”

  ”I had photographs. They took my picture with Billy on one side and Molly Farrell on the other. They had their arms around me. And another with Mr. Bannerman and Mi
ss Lesko. But Colonel Belkin said I must show them to no one when we got back to Bern. Not everyone, he said, would understand.”

  “Good guess,” she said. “Don't stop.”

  “He said also that it would be an insult to your hospitality to bring back recent photographs of such people. However I would not have let them be used in this way. It would be a point of honor.”

  She believed him. Belkin's influence. But she wondered how he'd feel if he knew that Billy, his idol, had twice gone into Russia, once alone, once with John Waldo, and had silenced two defectors. Not to mention several KGB border guards who tried to slam the barn door. On the other hand, she assumed that Belkin was not in California to see Disneyland. She wasn't about to pry. Belkin was doing Paul a favor, sending Yuri to watch out for her. Wait’II he hears, she thought, smiling, how big a favor. She wondered if she should ask Yuri's permission.

  “Why did you cry?” he asked. “When you saw me, I mean.”

  ”I had a bad day. Yesterday wasn't so hot either.”

  He nodded. He understood that much. Her sister's death, so terrible, and then the FBI, knowing who she is now, and even now going through all her sister's belongings, putting things in bags. He was glad that he could help her forget, if only for these past two hours.

  He had read the message slips when she used the bathroom. Force of habit. One was from Bannerman telling her to stay, not to go out. The other was from her father. It gave the date and place of the church service for her sister. This seemed odd to Yuri. It was not a thing to be left written on a piece of paper in the hand of a stranger. It was a thing that a father ought to say to a daughter directly. And with kindness. Perhaps that, as much as anything, is what finally brought the tears.

  “Yuri?”

  “Yes?”

  “What did you think of Susan?”