The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  Urs Brugg scribbled quickly. He looked at his notepad as if it were soiled.

  “Their address, Leo?”

  “It's not a good place for this, Urs. They are in Marbella, living in a rented house not far from the beach.”

  ”I know Marbella.”

  “Then you know how easily it can be sealed. Getting men in will be one thing, getting them out quite another. My people, on the other hand, are already in place.”

  “Leo, your friend asks you ... do not interfere.”

  “Friends give advice, Urs. Either let me help you or give this to Mama's Boy.”

  ”I am sure, as it happens, that he will insist on it. But I am grateful to you, Leo.”

  “If he does not . . .”

  “He will. I know the man.” Urs Brugg flipped to a fresh page of his tablet. “Now,” he asked firmly, “where, precisely, is this house?”

  Bannerman had called Susan from the clinic. He was leaving now, he told her. He would be home in ten minutes.

  As he drove past the gatehouse and approached his unit, he could see sparks from his chimney, buming fragments of newspaper, spiraling into the night sky, evidence of a fire freshly built.

  He could see her in his mind. Kneeling before the fireplace, poking at the logs, helping their blaze to settle into gentler flames. She'd have put music on. Something mellow. Vivaldi or Brahms. And she'd have opened a bottle of wine. It would be waiting in a ceramic cooler. Dinner, she'd told him, was in the oven.

  Never so much as then had he realized how he'd missed her. These past three weeks, since Switzerland, he had come to dread driving home at the end of a day. He would watch other cars as they turned into driveways of homes that were warm and welcoming. A few still had Christmas wreaths on their doors. He could see people through the windows. He could smell their evening meals. More than once he had reached his gatehouse and then turned back. To Mario's. His office. A movie. Anything to avoid the cold and lifeless cave his home had become since Susan had last spent the night with him.

  But she was there now. They'd been together only since yesterday and already it had begun to seem that she belonged there.

  He remembered her expression, that morning, as he left her, having lied to her again. He had an appointment in New York, he'd told her, that he could not reschedule, much as he wanted to spend the day with her. She was disappointed, but fully trusting. He asked her to stay, wait for him. He would call Avis so that she'd have a car; he knew that there were things . . . clothing, cosmetics, that she'd need to pick up.

  He'd seen her face throughout the day, or imagined it. He'd seen her as he drove to his office where he returned the calls her father had left on his machine. Messages that he'd erased as she showered. He'd felt her presence as he consuited with Anton, and, soon thereafter, as he enlisted the help of Glenn Cook, his silent marksman, of Molly Farrell, his bomber, and of John Waldo, his machine gunner, then gave them their instructions.

  He saw her again, in the evening, in the darkness of Wesley Covington's delivery truck. He saw her body. Dead. Those flawless legs. Long and strong. Blown off at the thighs. Her chest crushed. Recognized her only by her hair and by the rings on her fingers because her face was shredded and torn by flying glass and jagged bits of sheet metal from one of forty exploding cars. It was that vision of her that told him what he would do to this man known as the Arab. And to all those like him.

  But tonight . . .

  Tonight there was the fire, the wine, and the music. Dinner on the floor. He would try to tell her all the things that he'd never quite learned how to say to a woman. Perhaps had never felt. How the mere touch of her hand meant more to him than all the joys of his life put together. More than all the birthdays and Christmas mornings and victories and cheers. But he would go slowly. Take Molly's advice. Not push it. Although he wished that Molly would stop treating him like a teenager on his first date. He wasn't so dumb about women. Or about their needs. What Susan wants is what any woman wants. Someone to care about, to share herself with, a home, feeling safe . . . loved. Interests of her own. Children, a career, maybe both. He could add, he supposed, not being lied to. But . . .

  . . . one day at a time.

  He knocked on his door. Three short raps, then two. He reached for his keys. He wished he'd thought to bring flowers.

  Hector Manley, eyes bulging, teeth snapping, lay strapped to an operating table in the basement surgery of the Greenfield Hill Clinic. He was naked.

  Around him, ignoring him, were two men and a woman dressed and masked in surgical greens. Outside, in the corridor, Lesko watched through a round glass plate in the operating room door. One hand had formed a fist. He smashed it, rhythmically, into the palm of the other. He had stood this about as long as he was going to.

  “Talk to me!!” the Jamaican screamed. “Bannermannn . . .”

  One of the men, a male nurse, sorted instruments. He held up a small saw for cutting bone, looking questioningly at the surgeon whose back was to Lesko. The surgeon nodded. The Jamaican screamed again.

  The surgeon returned to his work. With a swab dipped in iodine, he painted lines on Hector Manley's face where the incisions were to be made. Under the chin, behind the ears, two inches beyond the hairline. He stepped aside. The female nurse, holding a camera, took photographs from several angles. Manley looked beseechingly into the eyes of the nurse. She gave no response. She took more pictures. Manley looked at the surgeon, blinking, then turned his head from him. There was something there, Lesko couldn't see what, that frightened him as much as the instruments, that horrified him as much as the chilling detachment with which they went about their preparations.

  “Enough of this shit,” muttered Lesko. He raised a hand to the door.

  “Mr. Lesko. Please.”

  The voice came from his right. He turned. Anton Zivic, blue business suit, immaculately groomed, had been watching him.

  Lesko's hand remained on the door. “I'm not going to let you do this,” he said.

  “Do what, Mr. Lesko?” The former GRU colonel approached him. He peered through the glass.

  “Carve the guy's face off.” With his right hand, Lesko pulled back his coat to show the police special at his hip. “That doctor picks up that scalpel, I'm taking the Jamaican back to New York. You want answers, I'll get them my way.”

  Zivic made a face. “Relax Mr. Lesko. And please keep your voice down.”

  “Relax, my ass.” He moved forward. Zivic raised a hand.

  “It's theater, Mr. Lesko. Mr. Manley has not yet been harmed. If you do not interfere, there will probably be no need.”

  “Theater,” Lesko repeated blankly.

  Zivic smiled. Sympathetically. He gestured toward the masked and gowned figure with the iodine swab. “That man is no surgeon. I should think you would have recognized him by now.”

  Lesko looked again. The man had rounded the table to the side where the instruments were laid out. Manley's eyes, wide and blinking, followed him. Lesko got his first good look. It was Loftus. Behind the mask, a plastic bridge crisscrossed with tape covered his broken nose. His cheekbone, also fractured, bulged to one side. One eye was still discolored. A rod from the device that wired his teeth had poked a hole through the mask. Now Lesko understood why the sight of him had so terrified the Jamaican. Better to look up and see Dracula standing over you.

  “He was here anyway,” Zivic explained. “Convalescing. He complained of having little to do. I asked him if he'd like to try his hand at playing the part of a maniac.”

  Lesko shook his head slowly. If Loftus had fooled him, he could only imagine what was passing through the mind of Hector Manley. Still, he was not sure about this at all.

  “All that talk in the truck coming up here, that was all bluff?”

  “Essentially. Yes.”

  “When you say essentially, what's left over?”

  The smile faded. “It was a bluff, Mr. Lesko,” he said, “but only if it isn't called. One way or the other, that man i
s going to tell us what we need to know.”

  Lesko twisted his lip. “And if he doesn't?”

  “He will.”

  “So you were serious. You'd do what Bannerman said. With his face.”

  “If we were entirely serious, Mr. Lesko, we would not be using actors. We have someone who can do that. She would be in there now. But it will not come to that.”

  Lesko blinked at the word she. Figured to be Carla. He would never forget, on that hill in Davos, how she was all set to core old Lurene's eye like a fucking apple. Her words. Or maybe it was the other one, Janet. Doesn't talk. Just knits. Looks like her idea of a good time is to microwave live puppies.

  ”I can see why you and Bannerman get along,” he said. “You're both pricks.”

  Zivic looked up at him, his expression cool. “We can't all have your degree of delicacy, Mr. Lesko.”

  “Yeah, well, you don't see me doing shit like this. You also don't see me wrapping plastic around some poor slob's face and watching him die just to get a conversation going.”

  “Mr. Lesko . . .”

  “And I'll tell you something else.” Lesko poked a finger at him. “My daughter's with Bannerman now. They're having a nice dinner someplace, right?”

  “Someplace,” Zivic nodded.

  “First chance I get, I'm going to tell her about tonight. I'll tell her so next time she sees a red cabbage at the supermarket, all wrapped up nice, she should think of the guy named Ruby and never forget who—”

  “Have you examined the body, Mr. Lesko?”

  ”I saw all I—”

  “You killed him. Not Paul. Tell your daughter that.”

  Lesko stared. “Bullshit.”

  “Hitting a man with an eighty-pound cash register, Mr. Lesko, does damage. You broke the man's neck. You'll also find that he has a pint or two of blood in his lungs from your ministrations with that clothing hook. It's only a question of what killed him first. Paul found no heartbeat by the time he sought to salvage a psychological advantage from the situation as you left it.”

  Lesko reddened. “Even if I believed that—which I don't—”

  “Please go home, Mr. Lesko. You are becoming tiresome.”

  ”—from what I could hear,” Lesko continued, “once the guy started talking, Bannerman couldn't shut him up.”

  “Take the truck if you wish. Although Mr. Covington would like it back in the morning. There will be a package in it. Please treat it carefully.”

  “So what's the point?” Lesko pressed. “If the guy wants to talk, let him talk. Or do you drag it out because you like it?”

  “In a few minutes,” Zivic said patiently, ”I will open that door. I will tell Mr. Loftus that he is needed elsewhere to treat a gunshot wound. Mr. Manley will be left alone for a few hours, strapped to that table, to consider his future. When I decide he's ready, he and I will have a talk. If it is satisfactory, it is possible that he will, in fact, have some sort of future.”

  Lesko straightened. ”I think I'll stick around.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “To make sure you—” He stopped himself. “To hear what he says.”

  “Then understand me, Mr. Lesko. That man in there knows the uses of terror as well as we do. He was trained in it, in Cuba. I will want to know what he has learned and how he is expected to apply it. But above all, if he is to survive his visit with us, which is possible although not likely, he will tell me everything he knows, or thinks, or can intelligently guess about this plan to bring car bombs to Westport. Have you ever seen the effect of such a bomb, Mr. Lesko?”

  He didn't answer.

  ”I have,” Zivic told him. “So has Paul. Twice in Beirut. Once in Rome. The least destructive of these killed fourteen people and maimed three times that number. If one bomb does that, Mr. Lesko, what might forty do?”

  Still no answer. But he could see it. He remembered the Marine barracks in Lebanon. More than 200 dead. A whole building down on top of them. He knew what one bomb could do. Let alone forty. To a town that Susan, damn her anyway, doesn't have the sense to stay out of.

  “Then considering the stakes, Mr. Lesko, you will understand when I tell you this. If you interfere, trust me, you will be shot.”

  Something was wrong. There was Susan. She was by the fire, kneeling, pouring wine into two glasses. The music was playing. She'd chosen Vivaldi. The Four Seasons. Candles were burning on the mantelpiece. She wore a blouse, it looked like silk, white, billowing sleeves, the top three buttons open. He could see that she wore nothing underneath.

  Everything, except the new blouse, which she must have bought that day, was as he'd envisioned it. All except for her eyes. The smile was there. A bit self-conscious perhaps. Perhaps more than a bit.

  Bannerman draped his coat across a chair. He paused to study her, admire her, letting it settle on him that she was really there, that she'd stayed, and that, in the light of the fire she was so thoroughly, heartbreakingly lovely that her presence seemed a dream. He crossed to her, kissed her lightly on upturned lips, lingered a moment, touched her hair, then lowered himself to the thickly piled carpet facing her. She handed him a glass. “Cheers,” she said and sipped. She lowered her eyes.

  “You know what?” she asked.

  “You're very beautiful,” he said. “What?”

  She smiled, made a face. “Never mind.”

  “Tell me.”

  She appeared to be debating whether or not speak, perhaps wishing she'd said nothing at all. She rose up off her heels. Setting down her glass, she reached for him, her fingers sliding through the hair at his temples, to the back of his neck. She pulled him closer. Her lips parted. She kissed him, hungrily, her tongue searching, her body writhing against his. Now her lips found his cheeks, his eyes, his forehead, then his mouth again. At last, she sat back. He took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “That's how you kiss a woman,” she said. “Pecks are for grandmothers with bad breath.”

  A silent groan. Bannerman thought of Molly. He could see her grinning, applauding.

  “Grandmothers,” he repeated.

  She nodded. She touched a finger to a place between her breasts. “Then you reach for this button. But you do it slowly. And not from there.”

  Bannerman closed one eye. Now he could feel Molly in the room. She was holding a clipboard. Making notes. Grading him. “Listen,” he said. “How about if I go out and come in again?”

  “It won't help.''She gestured, taking in their setting. “This is kind of...I don't know.”

  ”I think it's very romantic, what you've done here.”

  ”I think it's nice,” she twisted her lip. “But it's corny.”

  “Corny,” he said blankly.

  “Romantic would have been last night, when I came in to cover you, if you were only pretending to be asleep and you reached up and pulled me down with you. I was naked, by the way.”

  Bannerman felt his color rising. Molly made three big checkmarks on her clipboard, then tilted her head smugly.

  ”Or”—Susan cocked her head as well—“romantic would have been me waking up this morning to the touch of your fingers lightly running up and down my back, down over my hips, me feeling your chin, not too rough, just a nice masculine little stubble against my shoulder, feeling you start to swell against my thigh. I was naked all night, too.”

  Bannerman glanced, involuntarily, toward his bedroom.

  “Couldn't help it,” she said. “Had to rinse out my things.”

  ”Um . . . Susan . . .” Suddenly he couldn't think what to do with his hands.

  ”I know.” She wagged a finger. “Shouldn't rush things. One day at a time.”

  He couldn't think what to do with words, either.

  “Vivaldi's okay,” she said, her nose wrinkling. “But I was hoping you'd have Ravel's Bolero. You don't happen to keep a copy stashed for your less-fragile houseguests, do you?”

  He blinked.

  “Never mind.” He didn't get it, she realized. T
en? The movie? Bo Derek? Never mind. Probably no use asking about leather and chains and stuff either.

  Not that he didn't know how to be sexy. Usually, he was wonderful. So patient. And giving. He could make you believe you were the most terrific, the most exciting, the most beautiful woman in the world. And the best lover. Although the first time, she remembered, it took him forever to work up to it. Truth is, it was her idea. She'd practically raped him. Granted, she now realized why he'd been dragging his feet. He was being Mama's Boy then. Trying to see what this nosey reporter, this kid, might have learned about Westport. Well . . . this kid may not have been a nympho but she didn't just come out of a convent either. Or out of a David Niven movie. She didn't need wine, candlelight, and elevator music every time either one of them wanted a roll in the sack.