Bannerman's Promise

by John R. Maxim

  Carla was his one regret. When the white light finally comes, very soon perhaps, he will tell it without apology that he regretted only two things in his entire life: That he had never sailed the South Pacific. And that he will not be remembered as the man who finished Carla Benedict.

  From below, he heard the squealing of rats. He could smell the mildew and the oil. Also sewage. But the sewer was there before the trapdoor opened. He realized, miserably, that he was smelling himself. His bowels had let go.

  Soon, he felt the vibration of the stairs again. The big Russian came back up. The Sicilian followed him with his eye as best he could. He began cursing him, first in Italian, then in English, hoping to provoke a kick. A good kick would end it.

  But the Russian ignored him. He walked into the little kitchen. The Sicilian heard him rummaging for something and he heard the rats again. He realized, to his sudden horror, that the Russian had left the trapdoor open. In his mind he saw those rats, blood on their faces, climbing the stairs. He wanted to shout, “Shut it.” But he fought to stay calm. The big Russian, he knew, would not let such a thing happen. Nice-looking boy. A good face even with such scars. And he had been almost kind. Padding his head with those towels. Clearly wanting him to live.

  Tears welled in the Sicilian's eyes.

  He did not want to live. Strapped to a wheelchair. Needing a nurse to feed him and clean his ass. Old enemies coming to piss on him. Or their widows and sons. Spitting in his face.

  Spitting.

  He could still do that, the Sicilian realized. He would wait until the Russian comes back. Get him to lean close and give him a mouthful. Make him forget himself.

  But when the big Russian returned, he did not lean close. His eyes, sad moments ago, were now cold and lifeless. He stood, one arm outstretched, pouring something onto the Sicilian's chest. The Sicilian could not feel it—he could only see it falling—but it smelled, he thought, like oranges. He saw the jar that the Russian held. It looked like marmalade. He did not understand this.

  The Russian put the jar aside. He reached to his belt and produced a long-barreled automatic pistol. This, he held up for the Sicilian to see. Do it, thought the Sicilian. Shoot. Or else lean close.

  But the Russian did neither. Now he raised his other hand. In it, squealing and kicking, were two rats held by their necks. The Sicilian blinked.

  “You are ready to die, yes?” the Russian asked him.

  The Sicilian spat, but he did not have the breath for it. The spittle ran down his cheek.

  Yuri waved the Browning. “Talk to me,” he said, “and you die this way.”

  He paused, letting the idea sink in. Next, he raised the hand that held the struggling rats. He then leaned over and rubbed their faces in the marmalade.

  “Don't talk,” he said when he straightened, “and I leave you with the rats. You choose.”

  The Sicilian, eyes wide, tried to spit again. He had no moisture left.

  Yuri let the two rats fall.

  39

  Americaland turned out to be Pushkin Square.

  It would have been hard to miss. On the right, approaching it, Lesko saw a neon Coca-Cola sign at least two stories high. On the left was the famous Moscow McDonald's.

  “Biggest in world,” said Valentin. “Twenty-seven cash registers.”

  Further on, there was a Pizza Hut. And an Estée Lauder store. In the park, the centerpiece of the square, Lesko saw a group of about a dozen bikers. Black leather, shaven heads, some with facial tattoos. They were watching, with apparent distaste, a smaller group of punks with spiked hair in Day-Glo colors. There were ice-cream vendors. Street artists. Three or four guitarists. Two young kids kissing.

  Americaland.

  Tourists come from all the republics, said Valentin. They know all about this place from television. The TV ads for McDonald's, he said, have a slogan. The slogan is, “If you can't go to America, come to McDonald's in Moscow.”

  Written, Lesko assumed, by the same guy who used to write those klutzy Red Square banners.

  “See the walls inside?” Valentin pointed. “See those murals? They depict life in America as all former Soviets like to think of it. Couples sunning themselves on palm-lined beaches. Picnic baskets at their sides, filled with mangoes and papayas. Everyone is rich, everyone is healthy, and winter never comes.”

  “Guys ... not that this isn't interesting . . .” said Lesko.

  “Yes?”

  ”A Big Mac is beginning to sound pretty good.”

  Valentin glanced at Belkin, who nodded. “Restaurant is five minutes,” he said. “Kropotkinskaya. Best in Moscow.”

  “Say again?”

  “Kropotkinskaya. K-r-o .. ”

  ”I got it. What time's the reservation?”

  “At eight,” Belkin answered.

  Lesko checked his watch. Seven minutes to eight.

  His brain was trying to tell him something.

  He wasn't sure what.

  Except that the K on that message slip—the one that seemed to give Leo a case of nerves—probably stood for Kropotkinskaya. Eight o'clock was on it, too. And except that being hustled out of the hotel so they wouldn't be late and then spending the next half hour poking around Americaland seemed to be aimed at getting them to that restaurant right on the dot.

  Might mean nothing, he decided.

  On the other hand, old Leo is starting to hyperventilate again.

  Irwin Kaplan hated this.

  He's now had two hours to think about it and he hates it even more.

  Three times, he asked Clew and Fuller what they wanted from him. Three times, they said they didn't want a thing. For the moment.

  Except maybe to see what the DEA might have picked up in the way of rumors out of Sicily. There had been talk, according to Clew, that the Sicilians were involved in a shipment of nerve gas to the Sudan. It's supposed to be coming from Russia. Maybe Kevin Aylward isn't so far wrong. Maybe there was an accident along the way.

  But it can get much worse.

  For openers, the talk is that the Sicilians mean to keep a couple of canisters for themselves. Maybe, with those canisters in hand, they plan to tell the Italian government to lay off them. Pardon a few bosses who were already in prison. Let them get back to business. Maybe, Clew said, they were planning a demonstration of what could happen if they didn't.

  Except that now it's nerve gas instead of bombs, this kind of threat was nothing new. Kaplan tended to discount it. In his experience, Mafia underbosses are perfectly happy to see their dons knocked off or rotting in prison. It leaves room for advancement.

  Nor were the Sicilians hurting for business. Heroin, their specialty, was big again in the United States; and cocaine, the Colombian specialty, was growing fast in Europe. The interesting thing was that heroin, which goes for $50,000 a kilo in Italy, fetches $200,000 a kilo in New York. Conversely a kilo of cocaine which sells for $11,000 in New York easily gets $50,000 in most of Europe.

  The Sicilians decided that instead of competing with the Colombians and driving prices down, why not cooperate? The result was a deal called the Sicilian Swap. The Sicilian network sells Colombian shit and vice versa.

  Might the Sicilians really be moving nerve gas?

  Maybe.

  They'll move almost anything if it's a condition of a drug deal. For example, the poppy growers in Turkestan might say, “Yeah, we'll sell you so many tons of base for so much a ton, but your airplane or whatever has to make a couple of deliveries for us on the way home.”

  Happens all the time.

  But making deliveries to the Sudan struck Kaplan as a possible deal breaker. The Sudan, as of a 1989 coup, has an Islamic military government. Those guys hang drug traffickers. On the other hand, the Sudan has become a haven for Islamic terrorist groups ever since the Syrians told them to get out of Lebanon and since even Qaddafi decided to cool it for a while. If nerve gas was for sale, those groups might well be in the market for it.

  Fuller, however, did
not seem terribly concerned about the ultimate buyer. Maybe he's got that covered. Or maybe he knows that their Iranian sponsors would never let them play with gases that could just as easily kill everyone in Khartoum. Or everyone in Palermo for that matter. He's more interested in what the sellers are up to.

  The Russians.

  And what else they're peddling.

  And what they plan to do with the revenues.

  Roger Clew, no doubt, is looking for a hard-liner conspiracy. A grand scheme to stage another coup and make it stick this time.

  Fuller would concede that such a conspiracy might exist. In fact, he'd say that there are probably dozens of them. All over Russia and in every former republic. What else do you do when you're an out-of-work Communist, no more special treatment, no one's afraid of you anymore, and there's nothing good on television?

  Most of it's harmless. It gives them a reason to get out of bed.

  Will anything come of it? Kaplan duidn't think so.

  The thing is ... sure, a lot of these guys would like to have the power and the perks again. Have everybody jump when they give an order. But the smart ones have found a new toy. They've discovered money.

  Suddenly, perks like having the use of a car and a dacha on the Black Sea don't sound so hot anymore. A villa in Saint-Tropez sounds far better. But actually owning it, this time. Also the Ferrari in the driveway.

  Money.

  Even Fuller thinks that this is about money. Getting, rich. Not that he begrudges them. What he cares about, he says, is the damage they can do along the way, depending on what they're selling and who buys it. Anyone who'll sell nerve gas will sell nukes. We'd have to act. Fast and hard. Before some rag-head sheep fucker with an attitude has a chance to pull the pin.

  Anyway ...

  Why am I part of this? Kaplan thought. Answer: Bannerman trusts me.

  Just in case Lesko's honeymoon has anything to do with this . . . just in case Carla's new boyfriend is this Barca . . and just in case any of this lays a glove on Bannerman, they're going to want him to know that they touched base with me. Because Bannerman trusts me.

  Shit.

  He was tempted to call Bannerman right then.

  Bannerman? Just shut up and listen. Here's everything I know, everything I think. Did they level with me? Fuck, no. When have they? Has Clew known right along who Corsini is? Wouldn't surprise me. Why else are they so hot to set me up as an eventual peacemaker? Got all this? Good. Do me a favor? Forget I exist.

  But he couldn't make that call. Not unless he wants to go to work tomorrow and find out he's been posted to Guam.

  There was one other call, though, that maybe he could make.

  There's this guy, Ronny Grassi, big-time smuggler, who also happens to live on a boat near Genoa. Well... Monaco. Close enough.

  Grassi is from Brooklyn originally. Grew up two blocks away on Ocean Parkway. Classmate at James Madison High. Lesko knows him, too, but mostly from later after Lesko went on the cops.

  Ronny got into smuggling while he was still in James Madison. Bought himself this old Dodge, fixed it up, and started running untaxed cigarettes to New York from North Carolina. Also handguns from Florida. By the time he got seriously busted he had a whole fleet of trucks doing it. Grassi jumped bail and turned up in Rome, where within a year he was smuggling American cigarettes on an international scale. There's big money in it because the Italian government has a monopoly on legal cigarettes.

  He also branched out. Grassi deals in heavy weapons, diamonds, even spot market oil. Not drugs, however. He al ways hated drugs. And otherwise not a bad guy. A big good-natured slob. More money than God now. Knows everyone, including Bannerman. You can't have worked Europe that long without knowing Bannerman.

  Kaplan kept in touch. They swap favors, information, every now and then. Maybe he also knows Aldo. If Corsini is a smuggler, Grassi would know it, right? Or maybe he'd know him because they both like boats.

  Nah.

  Grassi's in a different league. His yacht is an oceangoing powerboat the size of a minesweeper, and he also has several homes ashore. Aldo has a sailboat. As a rule, sailors and powerboaters don't have much to say to each other.

  Anyway, he can't call Grassi either. That would be stupid. Corsini could be on his payroll, for all anyone knew. And the call could blow everything that Roger is trying to set up.

  Wouldn't want that.

  The thing is, given past experience, what Roger Clew is setting up might very well include Irwin Kaplan.

  Kaplan began rocking.

  He rocked for fifteen minutes.

  Then he reached for the phone.

  40

  For once, John Waldo was wrong.

  “Forget about finding a decent place to eat,” he told Lesko at the wedding. “The first thing you have to know about a Russian restaurant is that the waiter hates your guts for having enough money to eat there. Also for making him wait on you. So, for the first two hours, he doesn't.

  “When he finally comes over, you tell him what you want but he pays no attention. This is because they're out of almost everything you see on the menu. It doesn't help to go someplace else because they all buy from the same source. This means they're all out of the same stuff at the same time.

  “If the place has an orchestra, you can always kill time by dancing, except that Russian dance bands play like zombies and they only know two songs. One is ‘Hello, Dolly’ and the other is ‘We All Live on a Yellow Submarine.’

  “This brings up another problem. In Russia, women will come right up and ask you to dance, even if you're with another woman. Nothing personal, Lesko, but you won't attract the cream of the crop.”

  “No shit.”

  This last was from Katz. Putting in his two cents.

  “You'll get some porker” Katz says, “whose armpits would gag a maggot and who learned to dance by watching Wrestlemania. Probably while she was shaving.”

  But private enterprise, apparently, had made some progress since Waldo's last visit.

  Kropotkinskaya, the restaurant Belkin had chosen, was on an elegant old street of the same name, lined with czarist mansions and nineteenth-century apartment buildings. This could have been Vienna, thought Lesko. Valentin drove them to what looked like a townhouse with a wrought-iron awning out front. No signs, no identification as a restaurant. Just a brass plaque with the number 36 on it. Valentin started to get out. Belkin stopped him with a touch. The touch became a squeeze. It said stay with the car.

  A big pleasant-looking doorman came out to meet them. He escorted them into a wood-paneled lobby that was furnished like a rich man's parlor. Two carved chairs, a few heavy antique pieces. A mirror with a gilded frame. The paintings on the paneled walls all seemed to have Dutch signatures. The doorman, speaking Russian, using sign language, helped them out of their coats. He directed them to a thickly banistered stairway which, Belkin said, led downstairs to the hard-currency dining room.

  Belkin excused himself for a minute. The selection of wines was limited, he said, but there's a Berioska shop just across the street. He would send Valentin for a couple of bottles. Valentin would join them. He will not be dining with us but he will join us for coffee and dessert.

  Lesko watched him go.

  “We have a few minutes,” he said to Elena.

  She looked up at him questioningly.

  “Just so you don't think I'm totally stupid,” he said, “Belkin's out there asking Valentin if he got a make on the blond guy from the lobby. I could have saved him the trouble. The guy's KGB. There's at least one more staked out across from the hotel. Looks like a leg-breaker.”

  Elena took his hand. She looked away. But she smiled.

  Lesko hated that smile.

  He hated it because it always worked. This particular smile, and this little squeeze of his hand, said, “You are so good for me, Lesko.”

  It said, “And I am always so pleased with you. You miss nothing. You are very hard to fool. But you let me fool you all th
e same.”

  “I'm going to hear all about this at dinner, right?”

  She nodded.

  ”I got you a present,” he said.

  The smile became a grin. ”I know.”

  “It's not that big a deal.” He reached into the pocket of his suit. Elena's fingers were already working as if she were unwrapping it. “It's just this necklace.”

  Elena, suddenly, becomes this little kid. Suddenly it's Christmas morning.

  Of all the countless things which Lesko loved about Elena, this was one that he enjoyed the most and understood the least. Here was this woman who could probably buy out Tiffany's if she wanted to, but right now her eyes are going wide over a few bucks' worth of amber beads. She's the same way if you give her a flower.

  One time, after she told him about the baby, he tried writing her a poem. His first ever. Just eight lines. It sucked, probably, but she cried for two days.

  She was at the mirror, taking off her pearls and carefully slipping the amber over her head. Arranging the necklace. The tip of her tongue sticking out a little the way it always does when she's trying things on.

  “These are so beautiful, Lesko,” she said. Her shoulders took a little hitch like she also always does when she's excited. “And so old.”

  She found one piece that had a flying insect trapped inside it. This caused her to gasp. Lesko's first thought was that Mikhail didn't know his amber after all. They'd dumped a piece of crap on him. But the gasp meant she was thrilled. Sixty million years, she said. Sixty million years ago this insect flew along the shores of the Baltic and landed on the flowing sap of a pine tree. Sixty million years. She kept mouthing those words. She was still rhapsodizing about pine sap when the front door opened.

  Lesko turned, expecting to see Belkin. It was another party. Six men. He wouldn't have paid much attention except that the friendly doorman suddenly had an I-smell-shit look on his face. And except for the collection of hats. Two of them wore those Arab things that have the little cord around them. There was a name. He'd seen it a dozen times in crossword puzzles. Could never remember it.