Bannerman's Promise

by John R. Maxim

  Georgi nodded. He turned and seemed to signal among the vendors. And now the men in the raincoats. The Academician knew those two as well. They had come to him months ago, begging for the chance to work with him. We want to help you save our country, they said. And now they ignore him? They listen only to Georgi?

  Susan fought to calm herself.

  All he told her was they've come to kill Podolsk. How he knew that at a glance, he didn't say. To Carla, he just says her name and she's gone. She knows what to do. Do they rehearse these things? Like... here's what we do if we're ever in Moscow and .. .

  Don't think, he told her. Your part is to disrupt. You'll know when to shoot. When you wonder if you should, that's the time. Aim to shatter those display windows. Toss furniture out of this one. Anything. Disrupt.

  Then Bannerman was out the door.

  ” Uncle David? What the fuck do I do ? ”

  “Do like he says, Susan.”

  Big help. “There are fifty people down there selling stuff. What if I hit them?”

  No answer.

  And some of them were moving now. The woman with the pair of gloves and a man selling pots. They made eye contact—she was almost sure—with that old man's driver. The old man was back in his car, sitting with his face in his hands. The other one had backed into the store. The raincoats with the newspapers weren't looking at toys anymore, and two of the vendors were crossing toward the hotel entrance.

  “They're part of this, right? Or are they taking a pee break? Carla, what would you do?”

  Dumb question. She'd let God sort them out.

  Disrupt disrupt disrupt. Buy time until the cavalry comes. But that could mean more shooting, more bystanders hit. She had one idea, maybe dumb, maybe not. She groped for the phone.

  Podolsk did not want to think the worst. Perhaps all the Academician wanted was to ensure his safety. Not Carla, not even Mama's Boy, can read minds from a fourth-floor window.

  “He's not calling this,” Carla told him. “That other guy is.”

  Podolsk had caught only a glimpse of him through the lobby entrance. He could not be sure, but it looked like Andrei Kosarev. Kosarev, he told Carla, is first deputy director of the Ministry of Security, new KGB. Also one of the names on the Borovik tape, but one that Podolsk greatly doubted. Kosarev is a reformer, he told her, not old school, not corrupt. Academician Belkin might well have gone to him for help.

  “You want to bet your life on that?” she asked him. “Get in the gift shop, stay out of sight.”

  She says this as she stands behind the front desk, very Finnish in her blonde wig and her blue blazer with the red carnation. One foot is on the poor manager's back. Her eyes are shining. He had not seen this look before, but this, he thinks, is at last the Carla Benedict they tell stories about. For a moment, however, as she is sending him away, a new look comes over her. It is like fear. Her eyes open, her lips part.

  “Viktor . . .” Her voice is also strange. “Don't you get killed on me,” she says to him.

  Bannerman had come and gone.

  It would have been nice, thought Carla, if he'd stopped to touch base. A little coordination here. Instead he edged into the lobby, did a double take on her in her manager suit, and laid an I-don 't-believe-you look on her. He gave this little whirl of his hand and he was gone. She took it to mean that he was covering the back.

  Bad plan, Bannerman. Out front is where the heat is.

  She saw the two vendors—a thin, balding man with no chin and a frumpy thin-lipped woman with a butch haircut— crossing the street. The doorman moved to stop them. The woman leaned toward his ear. The doorman backed right off. Now they were coming in, she with a big purse, him with a shopping bag. The woman flashed a mystery ID at Carla, touched an if-you-know-what's-good-for-you finger to her lips, and took a seat behind a potted palm. The man wandered over to the gift shop. Carla held her breath. But he stayed outside, perusing a tall revolving rack of foreign newspapers, largely concealed by it. Back across, that driver whose gun she lifted had been watching, waiting for them to get inside and settled.

  Think Carla. You're a little shit-faced but you still have the edge.

  These two are obviously backup, the driver—Georgi, right?—would come in, knock on Room Sixteen, say who he is, and a relieved Viktor Podolsk, he hopes, will open the door. He might not kill him on the spot. They'd want to take him out quietly, strap him down, find out what's in those papers. If he's not there, kick the door in on the chance of finding a set.

  And here he comes.

  Carla lowered her head, pretending to be sorting mail.

  He'd know her if he looked too closely, but she was betting he'd want to keep his own face averted. And he was doing that. Let him go back, she told herself. He'll come up empty, go back outside, and waste more time getting told what to do next. Maybe they'll give up. Just leave. Maybe they'll pick a better time like when that plane we're taking is over Poland.

  Come to think of it, fuck that.

  “Hey, Georgi. Looking for someone?”

  He froze. He turned toward her, startled. The woman blinked. The man, partly hidden by the rack, kept turning it.

  “You have to get by me, Georgi. Me and your Makarov here.”

  She held it up for him to see. She held it carelessly, in her left hand, letting it dangle from one finger. The Finn under her foot tensed. She glanced at him. “Viktor, you stay down,” she said.

  She could see the driver trying to stare through the desk. She knew that he was weighing his chances. This woman, the famous Carla, could she be so reckless as to hold a gun in that way? He could beat her easily, he was thinking. Get the drop on her, see if Podolsk's really there. He fought to keep from looking at the other two. But the dyke in the chair had made her own decision.

  Her hand, and the butt plate of a machine pistol, cleared her purse. Carla raised her right hand from behind the desk, a second Makarov in it.

  She fired.

  “You can walk or you can die,” Bannerman told the man. “You choose.”

  He had come in behind him, first leaving through the Savoy kitchen, walking briskly up to Lubyanka Square, through the front entrance of Detsky Mir, through the crowds of shoppers to the rear entrance facing the hotel.

  There was another man with him, a bodyguard, but he, too, had been watching the street. Bannerman chopped him down. Without breaking stride, he seized the older man's collar, jammed the Tokarev under his jaw. The man stiffened. He managed to turn his head slightly.

  “You are Mama's Boy?” he asked, wincing in pain.

  “Walk.”

  “You don't know what you're doing. I've helped you. Now we only want to contain this.”

  “Then you won't mind walking. Go.”

  Carla's bullet chanced to hit the rising weapon, slamming it against the woman's rib cage. Her head hit the wall, the chair collapsed under her. The two Japanese sat frozen, the porter dropped to the floor, and the Finn yelped and bucked, knocking Carla's leg from under her. She fell to one knee and her chin struck the desk. It stunned her, but she regained her feet. The driver saw her eyes, started to reach inside his coat, but he threw up his hands instead. It would not have saved him. What did was the sound of breaking glass from the far end of the lobby. The tall rack was falling over, spilling newspapers. She swung both Makarovs on the man who had been standing there.

  Bannerman heard the muffled shot as he and his hostage reached the sidewalk. He could not tell the source at first. On both sides of him, vendors saw his gun and scrambled for safety. Boxes tumbled, goods were scattered.

  More shots. Much louder. He looked up. Now it was Susan who was firing. A display window to his left rained glass. One of the raincoats, a gun in his hand, danced away from it. He ran into the street, into the path of a CNN sound truck that had come screeching around the corner. It struck him a grazing blow, knocking him into the path of fleeing vendors.

  CNN? So quickly?

  The other raincoat was running tow
ard Bannerman, his attention divided between Bannerman, the CNN truck, and Susan's fourth-floor window. Bannerman swung the Russian to face the running man. The Russian barked an order. The raincoat backed away.

  He heard two more muted shots like the first. And then he heard a muffled scream. A woman's voice. The door of the Savoy burst open. He saw Nikolai's driver backing out, hands raised, crouching. He broke and dove for cover. As the door was swinging shut, Bannerman heard that scream again, more clearly now. It was Carla's voice. She was screaming “Viktor!”

  Podolsk had seen the man come in, saw him take his position. He had seen them all. And he saw on Georgi's face, when Carla challenged him, that Carla had been right.

  Why Carla shot, he could only guess. It echoed off the marble like a clap of thunder and he saw her stagger as if she herself had been hit. He had no weapon—Carla wanted both Makarovs—but he could not stay and hide. And this man by the newspapers was also pulling out a gun. He could take that one at least.

  Podolsk snatched a brandy bottle from the shelf and charged out of the gift shop. The man heard him coming, turned, but Podolsk caught him full across the temple. The bottle shattered. The man fell backward, taking the newspaper rack with him. Podolsk snatched his weapon as he fell. He looked up to where Carla had been. He saw belches of flame where her hands should have been. He heard the thunder again and he felt the lightning strike his chest.

  He felt himself rising, lifted off the floor. There was very little pain. This was all that he remembered.

  89

  Rozhdestvenka Street, the short and narrow block separating the Savoy and Detsky Mir, was jammed with vehicles and people.

  Five embassy Lincolns, their way blocked by sound trucks from CNN and now Vremya, had mounted the sidewalk on the Savoy side. On the Detsky Mir side, two ambulances, several police cars, and a half-dozen black Chaikas had done the same. Even the mayor of Moscow showed up, his office having been alerted by Vremya that those responsible for last night's carnage, today's rash of killings, were said to be at the Savoy trying to finish the job.

  It was Susan who had called CNN, who in turn had called Vremya. It seemed as good as anything to tell them. It might even have been true, for all she knew. Disrupt, Bannerman had told her. Nothing disrupts like a swarm of reporters.

  She had rushed down to the lobby as soon as Bannerman and the man he was holding made it safely through the door. She knew that there had been shooting in the building. The three dull booms and their vibrations had come right up through the floor. When she emerged from the lobby stairwell, there seemed to be bodies everywhere, but most of them were moving. The woman who was not a vendor was on her knees, clutching her chest, trying to crawl-toward the exit. The man, his head bleeding, was also trying to rise, and a Japanese was trying to hold him still. Another Japanese was kneeling with Carla over a man who, Susan feared, was probably Major Podolsk. Carla was talking to him, desperation in her voice. The Japanese was packing newspaper against wounds high on his chest.

  She saw Bannerman, his pistol under that man's chin, his attention still on the street, trying to get Carla to answer him. What happened here? Who shot him? From the look in his eyes, he was within a blink of blowing the man's head off if the answer was Nikolai Belkin's driver.

  The next five minutes were a blur of faces and running feet. The first of the Lincolns pulled up outside, Roger, Irwin, and Miggs. More embassy suits followed, Yuri with them. The suits sealed off the lobby, searching and guarding the two who had pretended to be vendors. They let no one in or out until the first EMS crew arrived and, with it, a Doctor Meltzer from the embassy.

  Yuri picked Carla off the lobby floor so that Meltzer had room to work. He took her aside, got her to speak a few words. A suit scooped up two Makarovs that had been on the floor beside her. Yuri steered Carla toward Bannerman but seemed to think better of it. Bannerman was busy with Roger and the man he was holding. Carla shook Yuri off and was down with the injured man again. Holding his head. Stroking it.

  Susan called Yuri's name. “Is that Podolsk?” she asked him.

  He sighed and nodded.

  ”I think I know who shot him. He's right outside.”

  Yuri started to shake his head, his eyes terribly sad, but he followed her finger. The driver was still out there, blocked in. He stood talking to one of the raincoats, seemed exceedingly nervous, kept glancing at the figure that was slumped in the back seat of the black Chaika. She told Yuri what they'd seen, and what she'd seen, from the fourth-floor window. That man, the driver? Whoever he works for, it's not Leo's uncle. Leo's uncle tried to stop him.

  Yuri's sad eyes slowly widened. His nostrils flared. Without a word, he was out the front door. The driver saw him coming, saw his face, turned, and tried to run. Yuri reached him, gripped his jacket, was asking him questions and getting denials. Yuri pulled him toward the left rear door of the Chaika, opened it, and seemed to freeze. As if in slow motion, Susan saw him reach in and place the fingers of his free hand on the throat of Nikolai Belkin. Just as slowly, he straightened. He touched the little dog as if to comfort it. Slowly, almost tenderly, he closed the door again. Susan knew that the old man was dead.

  Yuri seemed to explode. The hand gripping the driver lifted him onto his toes and the other stripped him of his pistol. Yuri was dragging him back toward the Savoy. The raincoat came after him, reached to grab his shoulder. Yuri whirled on him, brought the pistol down across his ear. The raincoat pitched forward. CNN got all of this. Film at eleven.

  Susan had never seen Yuri angry. She was now almost afraid of him. He burst through the front entrance with this man, glanced once around the lobby, then dragged him through a door marked Office. Several hotel staff scurried out. They scattered to find other places of safety. Yuri slammed the door behind them. More bangs and thumps came from inside.

  Susan's impulse, rather than to hear a man being beaten, was to go and sit with Carla, at least try to be of comfort whether Carla welcomed it or not. She had started in that direction when a new uproar started outside. Her father had arrived.

  His appearance caused a near stampede when the CNN and Vremya crews recognized him as the berserk American from last night's Kropotkinskaya massacre. He pushed through the gang of reporters, all of them shouting questions at once. The CNN correspondent asked him to confirm rumors of a retaliatory massacre at a certain dacha outside Moscow. The embassy suits kept them back. Susan noticed, meanwhile, that a similar line of KGB suits was forming opposite them. They had the look of men who thought they should be doing something, but no one seemed to be telling them what that was.

  Of all those in the lobby, the most relaxed seemed to be the man whom Paul had dragged across the street at gunpoint. Paul had lowered his weapon and turned to ask about Podolsk's condition. The man—someone named Kosarev— strolled over to the glass of the lobby doors and gestured with open palms to those outside, telling them to calm themselves.

  But behind them, there was still another commotion. A man in a blue police uniform was wading through microphones, making his way to the lobby. Kosarev sagged visibly at his appearance. His manner was not so much concern, as I-don 't-need-this.

  “Dobrij vechir, Kaptain Levin,” said the Russian wearily.

  Must mean good evening, thought Susan.

  ”Yeb vas, Kosarev,” the policeman answered.

  Irwin Kaplan, who had been standing in that group with Bannerman, was no longer listening to whatever was being said. He was staring, mouth open at the blonde woman with the red carnation, blood on her hands, and a man's head in her lap. He approached her, disbelieving, touched her shoulder, and lowered himself to her side. She looked up at him. Neither spoke. Irwin touched her wet face. He kissed her.

  Susan's father, remembering how to parent, yelled at her for being safe. That done, he asked if she had swiped his Beretta and yelled at her for that. If she got shot, he said, it would have served her right. He would not have even come over here, he said, if Elena hadn't made
him.

  “Pay attention to your daughter for a change,” Elena had told him.

  “Meanwhile,” she said, ”I could use the peace and quiet.”

  “And if all is well at the Savoy,” she told him, “take time to shower as a favor to me.”

  No, he said in answer to the brightening of Susan's face. Elena is not okay and no way in hell is she going to be moved. She is not going to fly, drive, walk, or even sit up until he tells her she can. He had thrown those embassy clowns out of her room, he said, when they even suggested it.

  Susan agreed, of course, that she shouldn't be moved yet. Still, in her mind's eye, she saw Elena tossing back the covers the minute her father left the room. Telling someone to unplug her, give her a hand. Telling Willem to call Vnukovo and get that sucker revved up. Reminding him that it's a flying hospital. And that although she had vowed to obey, that was only for Zurich. This is Moscow.

  Susan saw Podolsk move.

  He was suddenly conscious and trying to touch Carla's face. She was keeping him from doing it, backing away for some reason, her teeth clenched, tears streaming; she was shaking her head at him. Irwin turned to her. He seemed to be scolding her.

  Carla struggled to her feet. Irwin rose with her. She ran, half doubled over, toward the corridor leading to the guest rooms. Irwin followed.

  “Carla shot him, right?” said her father at her ear.

  “No . . . No, I think it was . . .”

  But Lesko knew the look. “She shot him,” he said.

  The door marked Office opened.

  Yuri came out dragging the driver with him. The driver was holding his ribs. He was bleeding from the mouth.

  “Who has comb?” he asked Susan and her father. “Also handkerchief.”

  Startled, she produced both from her purse, then tried to snap it shut on her father's fingers, which were relieving her of the Beretta. Her father pulled it free.