Irwin had known Lesko since his early days in New York when Lesko had just made detective and Irwin was a young assistant district attorney. He and his wife would probably have come to the wedding at their own expense, but it would have stretched their budget. Instead, at Lesko's suggestion, he told his supervisors about the invitation and then feigned a reluctance to accept.
“Here's what you do,” Lesko had advised him. “You tell your boss you're not going. Too many unsavory characters. Name names, watch his mouth drop. Play this right and he'll send you over on Air Force One.”
Irwin's boss very nearly did. The DEA provided first-class tickets to Zurich and four nights in a junior suite at the Dolder Grand Hotel. The trip would not be charged as vacation time. The only price Irwin paid was to endure a daylong briefing by some CIA types and some instruction in the use of a special pinhole camera in the event that ordinary cameras were banned. Irwin dropped it into a trash basket upon clearing customs in Zurich.
A nice, if wasteful gesture, thought Bannerman, who promised him a set of Susan's pictures. Well... give or take a few.
Similarly, Yasenevo was delighted to have two of its own in the wedding party, but Leo would not have missed it for the Order of Lenin or whatever their highest medal is these days. His relationship with the Bruggs went back more than a decade.
Certainly, he had cultivated old Urs Brugg for professional reasons—the patriarch of the Brugg family was the sort of asset on whom careers are built—but for all of that, Leo's affection for that splendid old man was no less genuine. Urs Brugg was gone now. Almost two years. Elena, who had hoped to live a quiet life for a change, having given away most of her money, discovered that her uncle had left her the bulk of his estate, which included an art collection valued in excess of twenty million dollars and a controlling interest in a dozen corporations.
A cordial relationship with Mama's Boy had not hurt Leo Belkin's career either. Bannerman had been friendly with him for those same two years although he had known Leo by reputation long before that. Leo, Bannerman felt sure, would never do anything that might risk either relationship. Not if he had a choice. But Leo did seem to have a lot on his mind during the days leading up to the ceremony. Bannerman had asked him, finally, directly, whether he was having second thoughts about the upcoming wedding trip. Belkin said no, but a bit too emphatically for Bannerman's. comfort;
Susan was particularly fond of the other KGB officer, Yuri Rykov, recently promoted to major although he was only twenty-nine. Yuri was a handsome, good-natured young man with an engaging boyishness about him. He had only just returned to limited duty after being shot last year in Los Angeles. His face still needed some work. The jaw was now fully functional, but the right cheekbone would require further reconstruction and some of the scarring would need to be reduced. None of this, however, had stopped him from courting a young Swiss widow and concert cellist named Maria.
On the day of the wedding he had taken Bannerman aside to tell him, shyly, that he and Maria had also talked of marriage. Having said that, and after a searching look, he let the subject lie.
Bannerman understood. Marriage to a European would certainly mean the end of a career in foreign intelligence. Even the thought of it, if known, would result in his immediate recall. Policy was still firm in that regard. Leo, although sympathetic, would not be able to help him. Through that eye contact, Yuri was asking whether Westport might be an option if it came to that.
A fact not lost upon young Yuri was that Anton Zivic, the former GRU colonel who was also in the wedding party, had defected some years earlier and was now living unmolested in Westport. Running a successful art and antiques business and chairing the council that exercised a measure of control over about thirty retired but occasionally rambunctious agents. Yuri was also well aware that Zivic had already been ordered home, under guard, when Mama's Boy not only spirited him out of Rome but successfully kept him out of the hands of the American intelligence authorities who might have kept him under lock and key for up to three years of debriefing. But that, of course, was before the Gorbachev/Yeltsin era.
Things might be easier now, thought Bannerman, but far from relaxed. And Yuri was not Anton. Anton had no ties at home, no family, and might well have been arrested if he'd returned. Yuri was in no such danger, and his parents and sisters were still living. Russia's attempts at democratization notwithstanding, the defection of a KGB officer was still the crime of desertion. If he bartered information for sanctuary, the crime would become treason. The effect on his family, even now, might be considerable. Bannerman was not sure that Yuri could deal with that. And Bannerman, in any case, could not take him in without Leo Belkin's blessing. To do so would be a breach of faith.
“Let me know what you decide,” Bannerman had told the young officer. “But talk to Leo first.”
This brief exchange with Yuri had been the extent of anything resembling a conspiracy during Bannerman's several days in Zurich. Certainly, an informal job mart had developed. Leads were swapped among the free-lancers regarding government agencies or businessmen who might be hiring and for what purpose. A select few were quietly put on retainer by the Bruggs. Bannerman didn't ask why. It was none of his business.
At one point, he had seen Elena walking arm in arm with John Waldo. Telling him, among other things, how much younger he looked. Waldo trying not to grin or blush for fear of causing wrinkles. A while later, Waldo said that he might hang around for a couple of weeks. If Bannerman had no objection. Bannerman had none. Elena had already told him what she had in mind. He told Waldo to take all the time he needed.
Most of the guests, invited or otherwise, were more or less equally discreet. They were sure that at least some of their conversations were being recorded via long-range listening devices and would soon be making busywork for assorted intelligence analysts. With that in mind, a few amused themselves by sharing outlandish gossip and inventing colorful stories for the benefit of the eavesdroppers. Otherwise, the nearest thing to an intrigue that he noticed was a series of obviously conspiratorial conversations between Susan and Elena.
Bannerman had often thought that some sort of virus must be released at wedding ceremonies. Other than Yuri, he had heard at least a half-dozen people make wistful comments about settling down, perhaps starting a family. They regarded Lesko as poof that almost any man could find a woman who'd marry him and Susan as proof that no genetic mutation need result.
They would point to Billy McHugh—called Bannerman's monster, although not to his face—who had stunned the European crowd by showing up with a wife. He had finally married his widowed Westport landlady, the former Mrs. DiBiasi, after a courtship of almost Sicilian propriety. Back when Billy worked Europe, he had never even stroked a cat as far as anyone knew. Some had never heard him speak. Now here he was tending bar at Elena's wedding.
There was no need for him to do so, of course. The affair was elaborately catered. He was simply more comfortable behind a bar. It was behind the bar at Mario's, a Westport restaurant, one of the several CIA-owned businesses that Bannerman had seized, that he'd gradually learned to be at ease with ordinary people.
Even more dazzling was the sight of the equally dangerous Carla Benedict, who appeared with a gentleman friend—a former movie actor from Genoa—and was actually seen smiling at him and holding his hand. Seeing Calamity Carla in a public display of affection was not unlike seeing Dracula at mass.
Carla had not returned to Westport after her sister's funeral. She stayed with Yuri until he was able to travel and then flew back to Switzerland with him. Once there, she elected to stay until she could get some of her own emotions sorted out. She'd found a little apartment above an old stone boathouse on Lake Zurich where she kept pretty much to herself. Yuri looked in on her regularly, as did Elena, and they did their best to coax some life back into her. Thank God for her Italian. He was probably exactly what she needed. Someone not from her world. Someone who saw only a pretty little woman with sad eyes w
ho took long lonely walks after dark. It was good to see her smiling again.
As for Susan and those chats with Elena, complete with furtive glances in his direction and private little smiles, there could not be much doubt about their content. Neither he nor Susan had ever actually raised the subject of marriage but the undercurrent was certainly there. Her father had expressed a preference, though marginal, of marriage over cohabitation. And Susan had remarked more than once that she'd like to have all her children by the time she turns thirty. Bannerman neither encouraged nor resisted either prospect. If pressed, however, he would ask her to give it more time. Thirty was almost four years off.
His circumspection was rooted not so much in the difference between her world and his. That difference had narrowed considerably. His Westport people had fully accepted her. A few, Molly Farrell and Billy McHugh in particular, had grown especially close to her. Even Carla Benedict had eventually come around. Up to a point.
It helped, of course, that Carla now had an outsider of her own, but it was more than that. Last year, Susan had passed what in Carla's eyes was a critical test. She had shot a man.
She didn't kill him, not directly, and she'd had little choice but to shoot. Still, she was deeply affected by it. She learned that there was a world of difference between shooting at paper targets or dead trees and seeing what a bullet could do to human flesh. Carla, not having returned to Westport, never saw that Susan had become moody, often distant, and was drinking somewhat more than her occasional glass of wine. Carla never saw the night sweats or heard the tears. This went on for many weeks.
Bannerman, during this time, would hold her, take long walks with her, listen to her, love her. He tried to tell her that he fully understood what she was feeling. She thanked him for that. But she doubted that he understood and said so.
It was this doubt that made him wonder if Carla had not been right all along. That Susan, Lesko's daughter or not, could never really adapt to his world any more than he could go back to hers. Anton Zivic, though fond of Susan, tended to agree.
Bannerman had asked him to lunch at Mario's, the restaurant now managed by Molly Farrell.
“When she denies that you could know what she feels,” he told Bannerman, “she intends no insult. She simply realizes that, in her place, you would have felt very little.”
“That's not necessarily true, Anton.”
“For you, for all of us,” Zivic corrected him, “it is both true and necessary.”
“And for Susan?”
“For Susan, remorse is necessary. It affirms that her humanity remains intact.”
“In her eyes, what does that make me?”
Zivic shrugged and sighed. “She believes that you are a fundamentally decent man. In fact, you are.”
Bannerman waited, expecting a qualifier. For a moment, Zivic seemed to be chewing on something other than his veal chop but, whatever it was, he left it unsaid.
“Anton, do you think this can last?”
Another shrug. “Relationships change. You know that.”
“Sure, but that's not what you're suggesting. You think I'll have to end it.”
Zivic blinked. ”I said no such thing.”
Bannerman retreated, taking time to regroup as he adjusted his napkin. His friend's discomfort was clear to him. And Bannerman realized that pressing him for advice on such a personal matter stretched the bounds of Zivic's role. But Zivic still seemed to regard Susan as an outsider, and Bannerman had thought that that issue, of Susan being a danger to them, had long since been put to rest. Time and again, Susan had shown what she was made of. All of them, Anton included, no longer watched their words in her presence. There was almost nothing of substance that she didn't know about them. Bannerman so reminded Zivic.
“She knows only stories, Paul. She listens to anecdotes. True, she has been involved in one or two, peripherally, but—”
Bannerman interrupted him. He pointed out that Susan had very nearly been killed on two occasions. This could hardly be described as peripheral. Further, it was her involvement with him that had put her at risk. She understood that. And yet she stayed.
“These . . . occasions you speak of. Has she ever discussed their resolution with you? In specific terms, I mean.”
Bannerman made a face. ”I don't cut off ears and bring them home to her, if that's what you're asking.”
”I know you don't.”
“Then would you please tell me what's on your mind?”
Zivic toyed with the vegetable on his plate. “The man Susan knows,” he said, “is a rather nice man. Excellent manners, a sense of humor, never unkind or profane, and, having discovered the pleasures of gardening, he becomes more domesticated by the day.”
Bannerman waited.
“Yes, Susan has heard the stories. But these stories, I think, are not quite real to her because the man she lives with is nothing at all like this Mama's Boy. She knows only Paul Bannerman.”
Bannerman could see, more in Zivic's eyes than in his words, what was coming. “One doesn't rule out the other, Anton.”
“No. But Susan has never seen the other. Or she has chosen not to.”
Bannerman shook his head. “Susan grew up with New York cops. And she knows that her father has killed. I don't think that changed the way she feels about him.”
Again, a shrug.
The gesture, thought Bannerman, implied that Susan might have different standards for her father and the men she sleeps with. Zivic's eyes, at least, were asking how Bannerman thought she might feel about sleeping with him if she had heard other kinds of stories. Not of adventures, told with dark humor, but of executions. Not those of narrow escapes, but of the innocent passersby who had sometimes died to facilitate escapes. Of prisoners never taken. Of witnesses seldom left alive. .
“That's over,” Bannerman said quietly. “It's in the past.”
“So we keep saying.” The Russian took a sip of his wine, holding it in his mouth before swallowing. “Not bad for a house wine. Pino Grigio, I think.”
Zivic glanced around the restaurant, as if searching for still another subject that involved neither the constancy of Susan Lesko nor the wishful thinking of Paul Bannerman. He felt sure that the two were related. Remove Susan from the equation, thought Zivic, and Paul would certainly know better than to think that he would ever be left in peace.
Molly Farrell caught Zivic's wandering eye. She was standing behind the bar with Billy McHugh. They were in conversation with two female customers who were showing them an assortment of travel brochures. Those of cruise ships. Molly raised her chin, asking Zivic if he needed a waiter. Zivic smiled and shook his head.
He recognized one of the women. She sold real estate, lunched there once or twice a week, was fond of Billy's bacon cheeseburgers. She was smartly dressed, middle forties, formerly a battered wife, now a widow. Her late husband had been a lawyer who had twice put her in the hospital. This came to light during a rare evening visit. Billy noticed fresh bruises and swelling which she had attempted to conceal under makeup, asked about them, and the woman began to weep. Molly took over, brought her to a quiet table, got her talking. The woman was afraid to go home, afraid not to. Molly put her up for the night. By morning, her husband was dead. An accident on his basement stairs. His neck was broken.
This sort of thing was happening rarely enough these days that he had chosen not to burden Paul with this particular episode. Nor did Zivic insist upon knowing which one, Molly or Billy, had visited the lawyer. It was almost certainly Billy. Once again, Zivic found it necessary to define, for Billy's benefit, the limits of customer service and to berate Molly whose task it was to keep Billy's concept of friendship in focus. During his first two years in Westport, and before the rest of them realized it, the big bartender had performed similar services for at least eleven patrons who had told their Uncle Billy of their troubles.
His thoughts returned to Susan Lesko. This was not, of course, the sort of anecdote that they would sh
are with her. Too close to home and, strictly speaking, it would make her an accessory. Not that Susan would have shed a tear for the lawyer, necessarily, but her tennis games with Molly and her banter with Billy might lose some of their easy-going camaraderie. Her relationship with those two, however, was not the question at hand.
“Anton?”
Bannerman had been waiting, his arms folded, while Zivic pretended interest in the vacation plans of those two women. Zivic turned to face him, one eyebrow cocked, a look of innocence.
“Anton, why are you ducking me on this?”
Zivic spread his hands. “Because you ask questions I can't answer. For this, you should speak to a woman.”
”I have. Molly says go for it. Carla says go slow.”
“Which of them did you thank?”
“Um... both of them?”
Zivic snorted.
Bannerman couldn't help but smile. He rubbed his jaw until it faded. ”I wish you'd help me think this out, Anton,” he said.
“You speak as if there were options. You will not leave Susan, nor will you send her away.”
“No, I won't.”
“But you fear that she will turn from you one day. This could happen in any case.”
”I know that.”
“Do I gather that you are contemplating marriage?”
“I'm contemplating how to deal with the subject when it arises.” Bannerman grimaced. “Anton, what if we had children?”
“Children.” Zivic stared blankly.
Bannerman looked away.
“This is the price of my lunch? I am to advise you about having children?” Bannerman's color rose slightly.
“Here is my advice.” Zivic leaned forward. “If you want Susan, keep her. If you want a family, have it. If you also want a golden retriever, buy it. Or are you one of these people who will not have a pet for fear that it will die before you do?”
Bannerman's Promise Page 6