Bannerman's Promise

by John R. Maxim

  The second possibility, while no less remote, seemed at least to sound like Leo. He had somehow tracked Kulik to Moscow. He didn't know, or care, about Borovik. All he wanted was to purge his own devils. All he wanted was to come, look Arkadi Kulik in the eye, slap his face, and apparently set a match to that hat he's so proud of.

  If this were true, if this is what happened, the police would indeed go looking for Kulik. But he would be innocent of this ambush. Such an act would be impossible for him. Too impulsive, the trail would—and will, lead straight to his door. And that will infuriate him. He will want to head it off. He will have to act quickly.

  “Viktor?”

  Podolsk waited.

  “Viktor, I'm going to ask something of you. You are free to say no. But you cannot, I'm afraid, ask many questions.”

  The major made a face. Still, he waited.

  “First thing is to go home,” said the Academician. “Get lots of sleep. Tomorrow you don't work, correct?”

  Podolsk shrugged. “Monday, technically, I'm off. But Borovik takes no days off except on his mother's birthday. I always go in.”

  “Tomorrow, take at least the morning. Take time to think. If by lunchtime you decide to head for the woods, you'll get no argument from me.”

  Podolsk looked at the sky. Good old Nikolai. Always, when he most needs you to say yes, he tells you ... feel free to say no.

  “This man,” Belkin began, “the man whose voice you heard?”

  He paused, choosing his words carefully.

  “He will not appear to be at the top. He is a man who hides himself in committees . . . collaborates. He might pick out a man who he thinks can manage and then push that man into the limelight. But yes, very definitely, he will be the one who pulls the strings.”

  He raised a hand to keep Podolsk from speaking.

  “Tomorrow ... or the next day,” he said, ”I think you will hear from this man. I think that he will want to see you. But trust me on this. It is better that you know nothing ... nothing about him in advance. If he suspects that you've been briefed, or even that Borovik has let his name slip out. . .” He stopped himself.

  “This . . . mystery man,” Podolsk asked. “What will he want of me?”

  “He will need you now. For a while, I think he will need you.”

  ”A while is what? A month? Six months?”

  Nikolai Belkin chewed on the answer before giving it. “He will need you,” he said, “until he doesn't need you. After that, he will kill you.”

  Podolsk took a breath and exhaled. For several moments, he said nothing. A sightseeing boat cruised by. At last, Viktor Podolsk shook his head. A rueful smile.

  “With all respect, Nikolai Ilyich,” he said, “you would never make a living as a salesman.”

  59

  Ernst Lechmann had no problem getting the doorman to talk. After CNN and Vremya, you couldn't shut him up.

  They had waited for him outside the restaurant, Waldo half a block up, Lechmann half a block down, on the assumption that at closing time he would head for one metro station or the other.

  It was Waldo's intention to follow him home, wait for him to fall asleep, and then wake him up by tickling his nose with the muzzle of a Heckler & Koch. Typical John Waldo plan, thought Lechmann. Go directly to last resort. This man has the subtlety of a head-on collision.

  Lechmann's plan, if the doorman came his way, was to fall in step with him as he walked to the Smolenskaya station and offer a pleasant greeting. The doorman would assume that he was about to be robbed by this man with the funny accent who smelled of chlorine and cheap soap and whose wardrobe must have been selected in the dark. But the doorman would be put at ease by the Austrian's friendly manner and by the fact that, as he walked, he was counting off fifty-dollar bills, American, from a wad half an inch thick.

  Thankfully, the big doorman walked toward Smolenskaya. An added blessing was that he was the last one out. No need to separate him from assorted home-bound waiters and busboys. On the dot of midnight, the doorman locked up. He was still in his uniform. Very impressive. Maroon with gold braid. Epaulets and fourragères. Worn proudly. He would have looked like something from a Viennese operetta had the effect not been ruined by a bulging plastic bag thrown over one shoulder, filled, no doubt, with booty from the restaurant's pantry.

  Using one fifty-dollar bill as a calling card, Lechmann introduced himself as a journalist. The doorman seemed to have trouble believing this, but as long as he believed in fifty-dollar bills it was not going to be a problem.

  The first fifty got his attention. The second got a detailed account of the bloodletting that had happened two hours earlier. Lechmann forced himself to be patient, taking notes, as he listened to events in which he himself had participated. He was amused to hear John Waldo described as a little monkey who kept leaping in and out of a delivery van. More so when he learned that the doorman had done an imitation of him for the benefit of the CNN cameras.

  The smile froze on his face, however, when he learned that Elena had been shot. A head wound. And that the doorman had to crack Lesko across the skull in order to let the medics get at her. Two other men shot as well. Both KGB. Both seriously wounded. All four taken to Hospital #52 on Zubovsky. The three assassins, all local gangsters, had been piled back into their taxi and towed off to the morgue. He had overheard a militia captain telling the tow-truck driver to ...

  The doorman stopped himself, waiting for another fifty to appear. Lechmann peeled one off. It quickly vanished into the doorman's pocket.

  What the militia captain said, he told Lechmann, was, “Save the trip. Dump them, taxi and all, on the sidewalk outside Lubyanka. I should have done that with the other one.”

  This reference, he explained, was to still another killing that had happened earlier in the evening. The doorman was foggy on the details although one of the waiters told him that the big American was involved in that one as well. As for the rest of the captain's statement, his meaning was clear. The three in the taxi were in the pay of the KGB.

  But you know how it is with the KGB, he said. Everyone talks big these days but they're still afraid. That militia captain is no exception. What he really should have done, if he had the balls, was to drive right out to Zhukovka and arrest that son of a bitch, Kulik, before they bust him to sergeant and stick him in a traffic booth, which is probably what they'll do because he wouldn't shut up and go home when they told him to instead of sticking his Jew nose where it doesn't belong.

  Lechmann made a soccer time-out signal with his hands. He had the feeling that he had fallen one fifty-dollar bill behind. This was confirmed when the doorman stopped talking and rubbed his fingers together. The Austrian peeled off one and then another in the hope of an uninterrupted narrative. In seconds, he was scribbling furiously. He filled two pages.

  There would be no need, it seemed, to track down the Zil. Lechmann now understood why that bunch had come stumbling out of the restaurant. Why three of them were suddenly hatless. Why one had a broken nose. More importantly, Lechmann now had a name and a not-so-flattering biography to go with it. But he only had a partial address.

  “Zhukovka,” he repeated. “For two fifties, you should be more specific.”

  The doorman dangled a ring of keys. “For two more on top,” he said, “we go back to the restaurant and I'll look up his account.”

  Ernst Lechmann left Waldo to wait outside. Let him wait and wonder, he decided. The doorman was having a nice time and Waldo would only spoil it. It would do John good, he thought, to learn that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

  Lechmann waited at the coat-room counter, one eye on the front entrance, as the doorman went back to the office. He returned carrying what looked to be a stack of index cards, chewing on some leftover which he had apparently found en route.

  ”I give you five minutes with these,” he said to the Austrian. “After that is renegotiation.”

  “Ten minutes,” said Lechmann firmly. �
��Use it to make me some sandwiches.”

  The doorman gave no argument. Probably because a sandwich sounded good to him as well. He was now banging around in the kitchen, no doubt filling another plastic bag while he was at it.

  Lechmann started going through the cards, all of which had to do with this Kulik.

  Kulik, it seemed, made a habit of dining at Kropotkinskaya. Every Sunday night, with few exceptions, apparently since the restaurant opened. The file listed his favorite dishes, favorite wines, methods of preparation, and ingredients to be avoided. A notation said that he was severely allergic to cheese and nuts. In the margin, someone wrote, “He should choke on them.” After a note that he likes French onion soup with a sprinkling of coriander, another hand wrote, “Be sure to spit in it.”

  Not much affection for him here, thought Lechmann.

  And yet he keeps coming back. He keeps bringing three or four guests at a time. It must be why they put up with him.

  Many of his guests had notations of their own. Same sort of thing. Name, rank, and position, preferred dishes, eccentricities. Most of the names were Russian, a few were Moslem, perhaps from the other republics, but several sounded European. One of the Moslems had a problem with body odor. The card said don't put him too close to the fire because he gives off fumes. One of the Russians, said his card, makes sounds like a rutting pig when he eats. Try to seat him with his back to the other diners. But the remaining cards, by and large, were not disrespectful. Most were the sort of records that any fine restaurant would keep, the better to pamper important guests.

  Lechmann used his ten minutes to copy as many names as he could. You never know what's useful. Several of the Russian names were familiar to him. Old-time bully boys, mostly now retired. This was not a list of seminarians.

  The big doorman came out with the sandwiches. Lechmann asked him for a reliable map of the greater Moscow area. Any doorman should have one. He wanted to pinpoint that Zhukovka address as closely as possible.

  What he would do with it, however, was something else.

  From what he had learned of what happened in here, and from what he now knew of this Kulik, there was every reason to suspect that John Waldo had been right. That General Arkadi Kulik—KGB—Special Inspectorate—Retired, had indeed made the phone call that set up that ambush outside. Even the doorman was strongly of this opinion.

  “What now?” he asked. “Are you going to go after him?”

  ”I will. . . have to discuss it with my editor.”

  The doorman sniffed. “This editor of yours. Does he rock while he's standing? Does he hold his arms ... so?” The big man did a passable imitation of an ape.

  Lechmann pretended not to understand.

  “I'll speak plainly,” said the doorman. ”I think this is twice that I've seen you tonight. I think that before you were a journalist, you were first a florist.”

  It crossed Lechmann's mind that he might have to kill this man. But he looked into his eyes. He saw approval in them. The doorman's eyes drifted to Lechmann's waist. They were looking for a bulge beneath the new coat he had stolen. Lechmann patted his sides to show that he had nothing. His weapon was down the street, in an old window box between the second and third juniper trees. The doorman was not convinced. ”I think you and the monkey should go shoot this Kulik,” he said.

  Lechmann could have pointed out, he supposed, that a gunman does not often feel the need to pass out fifty-dollar bills in exchange for information. While at it, he also could have asked what it is, exactly, that this doorman could have against Arkadi Kulik.

  But he knew the answer. It was always the same. It would start, “Those bastards . . . every one of them. I hate those fucking bastards.”

  The reply would not get much more articulate than this,and it would seldom get specific. The more vague the complaint, the more you knew that you were talking to a man who had shamed himself. He had betrayed friends. He had informed on coworkers.

  “That office . . .” Lechmann pointed toward the rear. “Does it have a copying machine?”

  ”A good one. It's German.”

  “Does it have a fax machine?”

  “They keep it hidden, but yes.”

  Lechmann took the remaining cash from his pocket. He kept a few notes for himself and left the rest, about two thousand, on the coat-room counter.

  ”I am going to make copies of these cards,” he said. “I'm going to try to fax them, with a note, to a number in America. If I can't get a line, will you stay here until they go through?”

  The doorman stared at the money. He seemed to nod.

  “Down where they found the dead sniper, there is an empty window box just past the second tree. If you get a reply, will you leave it in that window box?”

  The doorman studied him. This journalist, he realized, had as much as made an admission. “Will this make them sweat?” he asked finally.

  Lechmann nodded. ”I think I can promise,” he said. “At the very least, it will make them sweat.”

  The doorman gestured toward the money. “Don't forget that when you leave,” he said.

  There was a good chance, thought Lechmann, that the fax would go through. A restaurant like this, they must deal all the time with Western suppliers. Anton Zivic would know what to make of those names. He would probably recognize most of them.

  The cover note would tell him of the shootings. If he doesn't know already. If someone hasn't called his house from Mario's and told him to turn on CNN.

  The next question at hand is what to tell Waldo. What did I find out? Not much. But I got us some sandwiches.

  No, Lechmann decided. He could not very well withhold the news about Elena. But if he tells him that she's been shot, and that the man in the Zil was probably behind it, and, by the way, I happen to have his address . . . who knows what John Waldo will do next?

  Lechmann snorted. As if there could be any doubt.

  “Let's just go look around,” he will say. “If he's there, maybe we'll ask him why he did it.”

  Lechmann could picture that conversation. John Waldo on this Kulik's chest, force-feeding him on cheese and nuts, perhaps with a corkscrew half into his ear just to keep the conversation flowing.

  This could be a long night, thought Lechmann with a sigh.

  60

  Arkadi Kulik was in a white rage.

  As if the dinner, all by itself, was not enough of a disaster.

  And then having to listen, all the way to the Sudanese consulate, to what Islam requires of him if his honor is to be ' restored. He couldn't get rid of those two fast enough.

  After that, having to listen to two fat-assed former generals who probably haven't so much as made a fist in thirty years, arguing over which of them gets first crack at the American, Leskò. Man to man, the one with the black eyes was saying. Just me and him. Locked in a room. Bare hands. At this, even Sostkov was rolling his eyes.

  Then at last, finally getting home, finally closing the door of his study so that he could get at the white powder he kept in his safe. Needing it to lift his mind above all this. Spilling it. All over the carpet in front of the safe. Down on his hands and knees trying to salvage pinches of it from the nap and then suddenly, in his mind's eye, imagining that Leo Belkin was standing there in the room watching all this, a smug and scornful expression on his face.

  Kulik didn't even remember getting up. The next thing he knew, he was on his feet and the golf club was in his hands and it was swinging at that face. Instead it broke a floor lamp. He kept on swinging, and he must have been shouting, because Sostkov came banging on the door asking if he was all right and is someone in there with him.

  He did not answer at first. He stood staring, near to tears, at the golf club, which had bent almost in half. There was a fracture at the crease. He knew that it would snap if straightened.

  With effort, he composed himself.

  “No ... just an accident... thank you, Sostkov ... leave me ... please.”

  But his ha
nds were trembling.

  A swallow of tequila would help. Lightheaded, he knelt once more in front of the refrigerated minibár that was a gift to him. from a shipment intended for one of the new hotels. Tequila was better than vodka at such times. It slaps you in the face. It puts the fire back into your belly.

  He would need it.

  Because then, on top of everything else, the telephone rang. He ignored it. Let Sostkov pick up. He did, but, after two minutes, Sostkov comes to the door again and says, in a strange voice, that perhaps the general had better take this call.

  It was one of the Sudanese. Kulik couldn't tell which one or even what he was saying at first, because the voice was so high and excited and he was also forgetting his English and lapsing into Arabic. Ridiculous language. Every second word sounds like lollypop or Ali Baba.

  Even when he got the sense of it—something about a shooting, AH Baba . . . dead bodies all over the place, Ali Baba lolly lolly ... television ... CNN, Ali Baba—he could not imagine what this idiot was getting so hysterical about. It was only when certain names began pushing through the Arabic—Ali Leo Belkin Lolly—Ali Elena Bruggallolly— that he began to realize, with wildly mixed emotions, that it was they who had been shot. He shouted into the phone. Slow down, he said. Start over, he said.

  But the voice of the Sudanese was now belligerent. Even abusive. More than that, it was accusatory.

  “How dare you,” he was saying, “to take this upon yourself. How dare you put us in such a position. You don't think they'll know it was you? You think this is the old days when you could kill thousands, no questions asked?”