Bannerman's Promise

by John R. Maxim

  Lesko nodded. He moved his spare clip to his belt where he could reach it quickly. Waldo could still hear his heart.

  “You okay about this?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Yeah, he was.

  . The fifth guy, Podolsk or whoever, wasn't here for Tupperware either. He's in on this. He's part of Elena being hurt. And if he isn't, fuck him anyway.

  Where the Minsk Road forks off to Zhukovka, there is a sentry booth. It stands at the edge of a thick pine forest that did not grow there naturally. It was planted so that the dachas could not be seen.

  Two cars, one of them a Zil, had gone past it, barely pausing, but the guard in the booth waved the Lincoln to a stop. He was an older man, probably a pensioner. He wore the remnants of an army uniform. He stood in pointed contrast to the polished border guards who once kept all but the party elite from entering. His job, all the same, was to discourage casual visitors.

  Bannerman sat back as the embassy driver—an intelligence officer named Miggs—climbed out, papers in hand, and approached the guard. He showed him a travel authorization, then gestured urgently toward the woods behind the booth. The guards shrugged and nodded. Miggs disappeared into the trees. The path he was taking, Bannerman saw, followed the course of the overhead phone line that ran from the booth.

  He returned, zipping his fly, in less than a minute. He lit a cigarette and offered one to the guard who took several. Miggs offered him his lighter, a Zippo with the embassy seal on it. The guard used it but did not hand it back. He looked at Miggs, his expression hopeful.

  Miggs shook his head. No free gifts. He would only trade. The guard spread his hands, saying he had nothing. Miggs leaned close, whispering. The guard hesitated, then nodded. He stepped into the booth and bade Miggs to follow. Miggs did. When he returned to the Lincoln, he smelled of cheap brandy, but he had located, on a wall inside the booth, the address that Bannerman had given him.

  “He can't call ahead,” said Miggs. “He probably won't try.”

  He did not explain further, but Bannerman understood. A swallow of the guard's forbidden brandy, traded for an embassy lighter, had made them coconspirators. The phone line had been cut just in case. Irwin had been right. Miggs was a good one. And Miggs wanted Mama's Boy to know it.

  The Lincoln made a series of turns and began climbing a hill. Thick woods on either side. Fewer houses.

  “Next left,” said Miggs. “The guard says it's the only house, about halfway down that road. What now, Mr. Bannerman?”

  “We'll see.” Bannerman lowered both rear windows. “Find it, but drive past. Don't slow down.”

  Kaplan squirmed. He wanted to get on with this. But Bannerman was in no hurry. For the moment, all he wanted was to get close enough to Kulik's address for Ernst Lechmann to spot him. If he's out there, he will. But if Lech-mann's alone, it will mean that Waldo has already gone in. Probably with Lésko. If so, they're too late.

  But if Lechmann says that they're still only scouting the house, Bannerman would have him give an abort signal. Or something that passes for one, so Waldo would know to disengage until they've had a chance to talk. Tell him whose side Podolsk's on, for one thing. Rethink all this, for another. Hitting that house at the invitation of some faceless Russians, and on their timetable, did not strike him as prudent.

  He had said as much to Kaplan. Kaplan saw it differently.

  “You're not going to stop Lesko,” he said, “so we might as well back him up.”

  “We'll see.”

  “Will you stop with we'll see? Fuller practically smeared lamb's blood on your forehead. You think they'd cross him just to whack you instead? I told you. They don't need this. They want it over.”

  “Who's this they, Irwin? I'd like some names.”

  “Are you going to tell me who you have here?”

  “Not yet. No.”

  “Fuck you, then. Anyway, they stay in the background. It's part of the deal.”

  Bannerman chose not to press. Irwin talks tough when he's frightened. The names can wait until he gets that out of his system. But Leo's uncle had said much the same thing. They want it over. They don't want this to touch them. It wouldn't surprise him a bit if all these theys turned out to be the same people.

  “Police car.” Miggs tossed a thumb over his shoulder. “You see it?”

  Bannerman was on the wrong side. Kaplan looked back. “It's just one cop,” he said. “Parked back in the trees.”

  Miggs's eyes were on the rearview mirror. They narrowed.

  “He's coming,” said Miggs quietly. “But that's a Moscow militia car. It shouldn't be out here.”

  Lechmann.

  Bannerman didn't even have to look.

  “We're okay,” Waldo whispered.

  His ear to the door, he heard nothing to suggest that Lesko had been spotted from outside. Just glad-handing. Good to meet you. Heard a lot about you. The youngish voice doing the honors had to be Sostkov. He was introducing Podolsk. Waldo mouthed the name.

  Lesko nodded, frowning. He knew a round of introductions when he heard one. And he knew nervousness when he heard it. Podolsk was nervous. He was meeting these three for the first time and that bothered him.

  The group drifted into the library. Lesko listened to their voices. He had matched each to a face and now he tried to envision where they were sitting. Kulik was easy. Distinctive voice. He was in the middle. The two bozos sounded pretty much alike. They were off to the right. Podolsk on the left. Sostkov stayed close to the door. Kulik was talking to him.

  Suddenly, the double doors of the library closed and there was almost silence. Then footsteps. And humming. Sostkov, he realized, had been asked to wait outside, but he seemed pleased with himself for some reason. The footsteps approached the dining room door. Lesko readied himself. The door creaked and bowed inward slightly but did not open. Sostkov must be leaning against it.

  Waldo used hand signals. I'll pull this door, they said. He falls back, you take him. No noise. Use your hands.

  Lesko hesitated. But he jammed his pistol into the small of his back and readied himself. Waldo reached for the latch.

  The siren.

  Both men heard it. Four bleats, not two.

  “What the hell does four mean?” Lesko mouthed. ''A bus?”

  Waldo frowned. He gestured toward Lesko's watch. “What time you got?”

  Lesko looked. He held up ten fingers.

  Waldo seemed to curse. “You're fast,” he said.

  He pressed the latch and pulled.

  77

  The Swiss surgeon peered into Elena's eyes.

  “Your nurse thinks she spoke? What did she say?”

  He asked this of the Russian doctor through Avram. Susan squeezed Willem's hand. She held her breath.

  “Sounds . . . words,” the doctor answered. “Not connected, I think. Dream words.”

  The surgeon glanced up at Willem with a look that said don't make too much of it. It could be, he supposed, an encouraging sign. But now there was nothing again. No response, even to painful stimuli.

  “What words?” Susan asked Avram.

  Avram huddled with the Russian. He translated.

  “She said . . . Let me go. Let go. Words to that effect.”

  Susan moaned in relief.

  “Let her die?” asked the surgeon. “It's delirium. Means nothing.”

  “Delirium is better than coma,” Susan snapped. “And what she was saying was Lesko. She was calling for her husband.”

  The surgeon sniffed. This was the one who had been pestering him with questions. Now she's an expert on coma.

  The Russian doctor was speaking again. A question for the surgeon.

  “You are aware that this woman is pregnant?”

  “Five months. Yes.”

  “And that she has endometriosis?”

  ”I have her history. Yes. Tell him I know what he's going to say.”

  Avram translated all the same.

  “Under the circumstan
ces ... her weakened condition ... recovery will be difficult enough.”

  “No,” Susan said sharply. The relief was gone, horror in its place. “Don't even think of it.”

  The surgeon looked at Willem again. “Please. It's better if you take the girl outside.”

  “I'm not the girl, you stiff-necked son of a bitch.”

  “Susan ...” Willem touched her shoulder.

  “You touch that baby and I'll...”

  He guided her toward the door.

  Lechmann had given his signal.

  The four bleats had no prearranged meaning, but Waldo, Bannerman hoped, would understand that something unusual was happening. If he could, he might withdraw.

  Bannerman stood at Lechmann's window, hearing about Waldo's first visit to the dacha. The Lincoln, behind them, had pulled onto the shoulder. Kaplan and Miggs remained in their seats. Miggs's eyes were on his sideview mirror.

  “Mr. Bannerman? Behind us, sir.”

  Bannerman looked without turning. He saw two cars, both yellow. They had stopped at a fork in the road some one hundred yards down the hill.

  “They slowed when they saw us,” said Miggs. “Now they're talking it over.”

  Bannerman could see that. A head leaned out of the second car. The driver of the first car looked back. He was listening, now nodding.

  “First one's turning off,” said Miggs. “Taking that other fork.”

  “Could that road lead to Kulik's house?” asked Banner-man.

  Lechmann answered for Miggs. “It's a longer way, but yes.”

  “If you go straight,” he asked Lechmann, “past the road to Kulik's house, is there a back way in further up?”

  “Not by car. It's forest. But I can go in on foot.”

  Bannerman stole a glance at the yellow car that remained. It sat, its engine idling, waiting.

  The men in it were obviously trouble but he needed to know who they were. They, however, were having the same thoughts about a Moscow police car and an embassy Lincoln, and that was his advantage. The trick was to seem more a nuisance than a danger. Try to draw them in closer.

  “Frisk me,” he told Lechmann. “Let them see you come up empty.”

  Lechmann understood. He climbed out of his police car and pointed at the Lincoln's front fender. Bannerman hesitated. Lechmann shoved him. Bannerman lifted his jacket to show that he had nothing. Lechmann pushed him again, ordering him to lean against the Lincoln, arms out, legs spread. He patted him down, ankles to armpits.

  “Do you have an extra weapon?” Bannerman asked.

  “No. Only a useless Beretta. Lesko took the clip.”

  “We'll make do,” he said. “Now search Kaplan. When you're finished, make a show of telling Irwin, not me, to turn around and get out of Zhukovka. Then let them see you drive off.”

  Lechmann snapped his fingers at Kaplan, ordered him out of the car. Bannerman, speaking softly, told Kaplan how to behave. Lechmann, his back to the yellow car, took Kaplan's pistol from his belt and chambered a round. “Safety's off,” he told him. He replaced the pistol and pulled Kaplan's jacket over it.

  Bannerman looked at Miggs. Miggs, still in the Lincoln, nodded. He chambered a round as well: Good man.

  “Someone going to tell me what we're doing?” asked Kaplan.

  “We're going to try to take them.”

  Lechmann knew that, but he didn't like it. ”I should cover you,” he said to Bannerman.

  “You cover the house. We'll be along.”

  Lechmann grunted. He began his act. He gave Kaplan another shove and pointed his finger in the general direction of Moscow.

  “When you see us again,” said Bannerman, backing away, “watch for us. Not what we're driving.”

  “It's time we had a talk,” Willem Bragg told Susan.

  A nurse had brought her a glass of strong tea. Willem sat with her as she drank it.

  “Where's my father?” she asked him. “Does anyone know?”

  ”I think Paul has gone looking for him.”

  She was angry with him. His place was here. He should be here to stop this.

  “My father. They'd need his permission, wouldn't they?”

  ”I would think so. Yes.”

  But her mind was not eased. She knew her father. If they told him it came down to a choice, save one unborn baby or save Elena, he wouldn't hesitate for a heartbeat. Elena was his life.

  “Susan . . .” Willem took her hand. “Nobody wants to take the baby. It is only that doctors must discuss every eventuality.”

  “Including how badly she wants it?”

  “That would be a factor. Certainly.”

  “Excuse me, Willem, but bullshit.”

  She wanted to believe it, but she didn't. Once a surgeon starts working on a patient, and you're waiting outside, he can come out and tell you any damned thing at all and you have to take his word.

  She thought of Miriam. Miriam would do it. She could be there in the operating room. A doctor would say, “The patient is probably going to lose the baby anyway. The endo. Her age. Let's terminate the pregnancy now, save the strain on her system. We all agree?” Miriam will say, ”I have a second opinion. Touch her anywhere below the neck and I'll shoot your hand off”

  “Susan?”

  “I'm okay.”

  “No ... you're not okay.” He grimaced to show that this was difficult for him. “Susan ... on the plane you had a talk with Carla. I think you felt the need to share a secret with her.”

  She stiffened but said nothing.

  ”I understand this need.”

  She closed her eyes. “Willem . . . what I discussed with Carla is none of your business. But I did not tell her a secret.”

  “Then she guessed. I saw it afterward on both your faces. Carla guessed, or she already knew.”

  She started to rise. “I've got to go find Miriam.”

  Willem Brugg took her hand, restraining her. He lowered his voice.

  “You know who else guessed? My wife, Heide. Like you, she is Elena's good friend. She guessed the reason for your visits last winter. She saw the truth on Elena's face just as Carla saw it on yours. And like Carla, she would die before she would speak of it.”

  She glared at him. “Other than to you, you mean.”

  He shook his head. “Elena told us both. Over tea, just like now.”

  Her lips parted. She didn't speak. .

  “You had gone home, Susan. She was alone with her fears. Among them, what if Lesko finds out before she is ready to tell him? Would he be repulsed? Would he hate his daughter for her part in it?”

  “Willem . . ” She started to shake her head. He ignored the denial.

  “The reason Elena told us ... she needed us to tell her that she'd done the right thing. We did. She had. You had. It's as simple as that.”

  Her throat became hot. The tears came.

  “You gave her a wonderful gift, Susan. You gave her a child of her own flesh which she could not have had any other way and can never have again. But you've given it. You must let go of it. I've seen you with children, Susan. It's time you had some of your own.”

  “Willem .. .” She wanted to tell him the rest of it. That he didn't know half of what he thought he knew. The tears became sobs. Her shoulders shook. Willem had to take the glass from her. He left the napkin in her hand. -

  “Ah . . . have I blundered into something else here, Susan?”

  She trembled. It became a shrug.

  “You are ... with child, I take it.”

  At last, a nod.

  Movement at Elena's door distracted him. The doctors were coming out. The surgeon was looking at Susan. Not with annoyance. Not with compassion either. Fear, if anything. Avram must have told him this was Mama's Boy's woman. No longer just “the girl.” Willem doubted that Susan would see this as an improvement.

  “And you have . . . ambivalence? Or do you simply not want it?”

  ”I don't know.”

  “You've told Paul?”


  She hesitated, then shook her head.

  Willem Bragg could not think what to say. You're just upset, Susan? Those who should die will die but then it will be over? You'll go back to Westport. Paul will start reading up on the Cub Scouts or the Brownies. Little League Baseball or ballet. Molly Farrell will teach the child tennis. Billy McHugh . . . self-defense. John Waldo . . . arson.

  Ah-ha.

  He began, he suspected, to see the problem.

  “Have you talked to anyone else? Carla perhaps?”

  “No.”

  “Why not Elena?”

  ”I was going to. When she got back.”

  “Saying what? That you have misgivings about raising a child with Paul?”

  “About even having it.”

  Brugg raised an eyebrow. Not that he found fault, but her views on abortion were more flexible than he'd assumed.

  “You're worried about. . . what? Paul as a role model? My father, the terrorist?”

  “I'm not worried about Paul. I'm worried about me. I'm becoming like Carla.”

  Willem had to smile. “As to loyalty, perhaps. And a very good heart. Otherwise . . . trust me, you are not at all like Carla.”

  She looked at him coldly. ”I want some people dead, Willem. I could kill them, one by one, all by myself. And this time I wouldn't bat an eye.”

  He took both her hands in his.

  “That's not Carla talking,” he said gently. “That's your bond with Elena talking. If you're like anyone, it's your father. And me, for that matter.”

  She said nothing.

  “Will you do something for me?”

  ”I don't want to tell Paul I'm pregnant. Not yet.”

  “I'm asking you to go in and tell Elena. It could do you both some good.”

  She hesitated.

  ”Go” he said. “You have a little time before they take her.”

  She nodded, slowly.

  “First let me find Miriam,” she said.

  78

  Sostkov was embarrassed.

  The door he was leaning against had given way. He was falling backward. His worst fear, before he started to die, was that they would open the library doors and find him on the seat of his pants.