The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  Another possibility, of course, was that Roger had run a test of his own. That he had set something in motion that ended up getting Mama's Boy angry and Palmer Reid dead. That would not have surprised Kaplan. And it might explain the haunted look he thought he saw in Roger Clew's eyes that morning, and a mind that was not on his game, which they were now one point from losing. Whatever demons he was carrying, three hard sets of paddle tennis were doing little to exorcize them.

  The ball, a too-short lob by Hagler, arced lazily toward Irwin Kaplan. It was a gift. An easy winner. They'd go back to deuce. The hell with that, thought Kaplan. He stepped under it and slapped it out of bounds.

  Barton Fuller frowned. His eyes accused Kaplan of a deliberate miss-hit. Kaplan ignored him. His own eyes, glancing toward Fuller's glassed-in porch and the coffee and rolls that awaited them there, said enough of this nonsense.

  Fuller nodded. “Let's talk,” he said.

  ”I will make three remarks,” Barton Fuller said, pouring coffee, “and then I'm going to leave you while I shower.”

  A knot formed in Kaplan's stomach. Fuller was setting the agenda. But he was saying that he could not stay to discuss it. Which meant that Irwin Kaplan, unless he walked out with him, was about to be a party to a conspiracy.

  “The first,” said Fuller, who had just transformed himself from a paddle tennis buddy into the secretary of state, “is that I am entirely familiar with the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the death of Palmer Reid. Roger has briefed me. If either of you have anything to add, anything you think I should know, by all means tell me but do so individually and in private.”

  Kaplan glanced at Clew. He thought he reddened slightly.

  “My second remark,” the secretary continued, “is, for the record, unrelated to the first. Roger has been to Westport. You might ask him to tell you about his trip if he hasn't already.”

  He had. To hear Roger tell it, the trip was a bust. Apparently, however, he and Fuller had some new thoughts about it. Or Fuller had.

  “The third remark is also unrelated.” Fuller's face took on a pained expression meant to show how deeply he disliked the need to be coy. He looked at Kaplan and then, in turn, at Hagler. ”I am keenly aware of the fact that you have two of the most thankless and most frustrating jobs in this entire administration. You are in a war that must, at times, seem unwinnable. But it must be fought, and it cannot be lost. Anything you need, any help I can give, is yours for the asking. No promising strategy should be overlooked, no weapon untested.”

  In the silence that followed this last, Fuller looked into the eyes of each man in turn, holding their gaze until he was satisfied that the message was understood. Kaplan and Hagler answered with nods. Clew looked at his watch.

  “Mr. Fuller,” Clew said, “if you're going to take your shower . . .”

  Fuller hesitated.

  “Sir,” Clew told him, “we understand.”

  “Irwin?” Fuller turned to the balding DEA man. “Do you?”

  Kaplan sipped from his mug. “You said we could talk? Privately?” He saw Roger Clew frown. Kaplan paid no attention.

  “Any time. On any subject.”

  “Thank you for the game, sir.”

  Barton Fuller left the room.

  Roger Clew waited until he heard footsteps on the floor above him. “Any questions about that?” he asked.

  The two men shook their heads. It was clear enough. Fuller had, no mistaking it, given his blessing.

  “If we're through tap-dancing”—Hagler buttered a roll— “let's talk about Westport. Do I gather that Bannerman's had a change of heart since you saw him?”

  Clew shook his head. “No change. He just wants to be left alone.”

  “But he still owes you a favor. He acknowledged that.” Hagler remained standing. It was his habit. A short man, although stocky, he tended to compensate for his height by standing while others sat or sitting while others stood.

  Clew held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart, as Bannerman had. “Not a big one. Not as big as we'd like. Not yet.”

  “What does not yet mean?”

  “Except for a quid pro quo on those drug warrants Irwin lifted, he doesn't feel that he owes us. Or needs us. I think he will soon. We just have to wait.”

  Hagler gestured toward the briefcase that held his printout. ”I have five priority targets in there. All of them hot. You said you'd deliver Bannerman. I need him now.”

  “It's not that simple, Harry. The fact is, Bannerman's right. We need him more than he needs us. If we're patient, that will change.”

  Irwin Kaplan leaned forward. “May I ask why you think so?”

  “Because regardless of Bannerman's wishes,” Clew told him, “he's not going to be left alone. That honeymoon's over. Since Switzerland, we've had inquiries from the Swiss themselves, from Interpol, and four or five other intelligence services, some of whom had assumed Mama's Boy was dead. We've even picked up some coded traffic from a KGB agent in Bern. We haven't broken it but it's clearly about Bannerman because it uses the same designator for him that it's used in the past plus a geographical designator that seems to be Westport. If that's not enough, other people who now know about Westport include”—he ticked them off on his fingers—“your old friend Lesko”—he nodded to Kaplan —“at least four other New York cops, Susan Lesko— who is, incidentally, still on the payroll of the New York Post —plus almost everybody in Europe whose last name is Brugg.”

  “These inquiries you mentioned?” Kaplan asked. “What sort of inquiries?”

  Clew spread his hands. “Has he gone back to work? Is he available? I tell them, ‘No, he's retired,’ but nobody believes it. Next they ask if it's true that he's taken over a whole Connecticut town and threatened to kill or maim any government operative who enters Westport uninvited. I told them that it is.”

  Kaplan frowned. “Was that smart, Roger?”

  “Time will tell.”

  Kaplan didn't like this at all. Clew, he gathered, had as much as said that Bannerman was an outlaw under no government protection. “You might as well have told them to take their best shot.”

  “Listen,” Roger shook his head sharply. “No matter what I tell them, they will assume that it's a half-truth at best. If I say, hands off, he's ours, they will assume that this administration has turned Westport, Connecticut, into a giant safe house for assassins. Wouldn't you?”

  Kaplan shrugged. Hagler stared.

  “Would you believe the truth?” he pressed. “That the United States government has tolerated the expropriation of property to which it has legal claim? That Bannerman, the famous Mama's Boy, has decided to create and police his own little world and that we cannot, except at the risk of serious bloodshed and national scandal, do a thing about it? Would you believe that any government could have a team like this, maybe the best in the world, living on its soil, armed and intact, and not be using it?”

  “Roger”—Hagler was pacing—“why the hell are we here?”

  “To be briefed. To understand the situation. To be ready to react if it changes.”

  “Bullshit.” Hagler bit into his roll, “You've got a scheme going here, Roger. We want to hear about it.”

  “There's no scheme.” He showed his palms. ”I would simply suggest to you that if Bannerman's old friends know where he is, so do his enemies. Sooner or later, someone will try to hit him. When and if that happens, Bannerman will need our help.”

  “The Ripper Effect. Have you shown it to him?”

  “No.” Clew looked away.

  “You're supposed to be so tight, why not?”

  “The timing is wrong.”

  “Don't tell me about timing. While we're sitting here, there are people packing Semtex into portable radios. You're going to wait until a couple of more airliners drop on Scotland?”

  “If that would get him to act, yes.”

  Hagler stared, then started to speak. Kaplan interrupted.

  “When you hav
e a problem,” he said, his expression pained, “and you have a friend who can help, you go ask him. Explain to me why this is more complicated than that.”

  “We ask friends if we can borrow their ladders, Irwin,” Clew said patiently. “We don't ask them to risk their lives. Nor will Bannerman ask his people to risk their lives for someone else's problem.”

  “It cuts no ice,” Kaplan asked, “that he's an American, and that his country is under siege?”

  “As a matter of fact, it does,” Clew answered. “If this country's problems touch him, or anyone close to him, he will act. Go try to make a serious drug buy in Westport. Go hurt one of his neighbors.”

  ”I see.” Kaplan sighed.

  “Do you?”

  “Sure.” He stood up and began gathering his belongings. “It's the new American dream,” he said wearily. “Sorry about your problems, America, but you're history anyway. You've got an economy that is now more dependent on drug money than it is on foreign oil. You've got cities in which it's a statistical certainty that someone in every family will be the victim of a crime at least once a year and nearly all those crimes will be drug related. But I've got mine so screw everybody else. What I'm going to do is pick a nice white-bread community like Westport, draw a circle around it, and say, this is my world, there's the border, keep your problems on the other side of it or I'll kill you.” He turned to face Hagler. “You sure you need someone like that?”

  Hagler nodded. ”I need him.”

  “What for? You could borrow picked men from any of a dozen federal agencies, to say nothing of the Delta Force or the Rangers. And you'd have men who'd follow orders.”

  “Lawful orders,” Hagler corrected him. “And in writing. If we were talking lawful, we wouldn't need Bannerman.”

  Kaplan started to argue but Clew waved him off. “Irwin,” he said patiently, “it's true that we have no shortage of Rambo types who are dying to be set loose. They're talented, well trained and very gung ho but there are three things wrong with them. First, if captured or otherwise identified as American service personnel, we would have to expect reprisals against our civilians. Second, take the weakest person in Bannerman's entire network and that person, guaranteed, has a hundred times the experience of the best operatives we could field. Third, our own people, no matter how carefully we pick them, will eventually bum out. Bannerman's won't. His people, each of them, are the one in a million who can do this kind of work without being destroyed by it. It takes years for people like these to develop. We don't have years.”

  “You also don't have Bannerman.” Kaplan sat back. “And even if you did, so what? He's got maybe a dozen agents. That's a pinprick, no matter how good they are.”

  “They're a beginning. And they're a test. We've discussed all that.”

  “You also keep saying they're one in a million. And just now you as much as said our own people are useless. So what do you do with this test?”

  “First things first, Irwin.”

  Kaplan turned to Hagler, spreading his arms. “Did I just ask an unreasonable question? Roger the dodger here insists he has nothing up his sleeve and now he wants us to believe there's nothing in his head either. Do we believe that, Harry?”

  Hagler didn't answer.

  “And do we believe that Roger is just going to sit back and wait for Bannerman to develop a social conscience or do we think he's going to give him a little push.”

  “Irwin—” Clew set down his mug.

  “And do we think—is it just possible—that Roger has given him a little push already?”

  Clew's face turned ashen.

  “Deny it, Roger.”

  ”I do deny it. It isn't true.”

  “Okay.” Kaplan nodded. “Benefit of the doubt. Now deny that you know exactly how you intend to hook Bannerman, and keep him hooked, and how you hope to milk the shit out of the Ripper Effect after that.”

  ”I deny that, too,” he said evenly. “There is no such plan. There is no such hook. Not that I haven't tried to think of one.”

  “And the best you've come up with is wait and see.”

  “For the moment. Yes.”

  “Look at Harry.” Kaplan gestured with his head toward Hagler who was pacing the sun porch, his eyes, now and then, falling on his briefcase and lingering there. “Does he look like someone who's going to wait and see?”

  Hagler froze.

  “Yes,” Clew answered. “Not for very long. But yes.”

  Kaplan held his gaze for a long moment. Then he looked up at the ceiling. The sound of the shower had stopped. Fuller, he assumed, was probably listening at this point. It would be hard not to. Unless he had a hell of a lot more faith in Roger than Kaplan could manage at this moment.

  “The man said we could talk to him. Individually and in private.”

  “He didn't say you could compromise him. I'd rather you left that to me.”

  “Well. . . .” Kaplan pushed to his feet and retrieved his paddle racket from a wicker table near the porch door. ‘I’ll tell what I'd rather. I'd rather go home, take a hot shower, then climb back into bed with my wife and the Sunday paper, let my kids and the dogs climb in with us, and start my Sunday morning all over again. That's what I'm going to do.”

  Clew started to speak. Kaplan stopped him. “There are two ways,” he said, “that I'll talk about this again. One is with Bart Fuller. Off the record. Just him and me. The second is with Bannerman himself to see if—”

  “You can't do that.”

  “Don't give me can't He's in the goddamned phone book. Or I'll get Lesko to introduce us. We'll walk him down to the post office where I'll show him the flag and see if he still recognizes it. After that, if he still hasn't shot me, I'll ask him straight out what he thinks of your little computer game. And then, if he says it could work, I'll try getting him to give it a shot after he satisfies me that his killers are nicer than their killers.”

  “This conversation,” Clew said coldly, “stays here. The three of us. You gave your word.”

  “The two of you,” Kaplan corrected him. “If and when you decide to level with me, we'll take another head count.”

  Clew watched him leave. “Like you said,” he muttered, “he's a pain in the ass.”

  ”I never said he was stupid.” Hagler stood close to his shoulder, his own voice kept low. “Is he right, Roger? Do you have something going?”

  “Like what?”

  ”A way to move things along here.”

  “Patience, Harry. My immediate concern is getting Irwin locked in.”

  “You really think he'd go to Bannerman?”

  “No. Not to Lesko either. He won't do anything that would compromise Fuller.”

  “As long as we're whispering, what do you have in mind? More drugs in his kids' lockers?”

  Clew turned on him, glaring. “That better be a joke, Harry.”

  “Roger,” Hagler closed one eye. “I've got six years in this job and not a single big win. I don't joke. And don't tell me to be patient.”

  “Tell me to my face. Do you think I'd set up that man's kids?”

  ”I think you'd do what works, Roger. So would I.”

  -16-

  The last week of January. Westport.

  Susan Lesko had gone home with her father.

  He took her, by train and taxi, to her apartment on Manhattan's West Side. He had hoped to spend the night with her, that night at least, sleeping on her couch. She said no, firmly. She wanted the couch for herself. She did not tell him that.

  The bruises on her face had faded, for the most part, to a pale yellow, and the cuts had almost healed. Her own doctor would remove the sutures. The predicted after-effects of her cocaine overdose were now little more than light-headedness, an occasional nightmare, trouble recapturing certain memories, trouble dismissing others. She would be fine, she told her father. She needed time to be alone.

  Susan stayed home three days. She took no calls, letting her machine screen all of them, returning those
of her father only when he threatened to come and kick in her door unless he heard her voice saying that she was all right.

  The call she'd been hoping for did not come. Not even a just-making-sure-you're-okay call left on her machine. It was just as well. For all that she rehearsed . . . fantasized . . . what she might say to him, she knew that she would remember none of it if the call should come. Her response would be cold, or angry, or bitter, or, worse, she might cry.

  Her apartment was strange to her. It was as if another person had lived there before. The fumishings, photographs, even the clothing and cosmetics seemed to have meaning only to that other person, no longer to her.