“That is also as before.”
“Molly? Billy agreed to that himself. He hasn't forgotten, has he?”
“He hasn't.”
“I'd better have a talk with him. Tomorrow morning.”
“Paul, he's my responsibility,” she said evenly, firmly. “And I'm telling you that Billy did not kill either one of those people.”
Bannerman rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. He felt sure Molly was telling him the truth, although not necessarily all of it. He had no wish to back her into a corner if he could help it. He decided to ease off a notch. “How do you think he's doing generally?” Paul asked.
“He's doing brilliantly,” she said, composing herself. “Every week he seems to find a new interest. He reads every word of Time magazine. He's studying vocabulary, he's learning to cook . . and this morning he helped his landlady wallpaper her living room. Last week he even took her out to dinner and a movie.”
“Billy had a date with a woman?” Paul almost smiled.
“It was really very sweet.” Her expression warned those at the table that she did not consider it a laughing matter. “He got a haircut and bought a new shirt. He wanted to know if he should bring flowers and candy. It was . . .” she almost said cute. “It was nice.”
“I guess that's good,” Paul said cautiously, “as long as you keep an eye on it. If Billy's never dated a normal woman, he's probably never been hurt by one. The only kinds of women he's known are. . . .”
“I know what kind he's known. I'll watch it.”
Bannerman saw little use in pursuing the subject of the Gelman~Sweetzer suicides. Part of the truth was clear. The rest he'd get from Billy.
“Let's move on.” He glanced around the table. “Any problems with anyone else?” The reference was to the eight men and two women who were under the supervision of the four he had called to that meeting.
Anton Zivic raised his pen. “Harry Bauer asked me to mention two items.” Bauer was a certified public accountant, once a German banker, who managed the financial affairs of the Westport group. “All of the retail and service businesses run by our people are showing a profit, with the exception of John Waldo's video rental store. Too much competition from the chains and drugstores. But there is a locksmithing and home-security systems business for sale in Westport. John asks that we buy it for him.”
“What does Harry think?”
“The asking price is fair, the business is sound, and John, of course, is already an expert in that field. This same firm, incidentally, installed the system now in place at the Westport town hall. The specifications could be useful to us one day.”
“It sounds okay to me. Any objections?”
“He'll still stay on with the auxiliary police?” Carla asked. “It's nice that John has his toys, but I'd rather have someone inside police headquarters.”
“He understands that, I assure you,” Zivic said patiently.
“And if business is so bad, how come he drives a new car?”
Anton sighed. Molly looked at the ceiling. Carla, they knew, was still smarting over being forced to cancel a Porsche, a red one at that, that she'd ordered last year on the salary of a part-time librarian. Harry Bauer felt that it would have attracted undue curiosity from the Westport citizenry in general and the Internal Revenue Service in particular. The choice offered her was to either work at an enterprise that might justify a Porsche or drive a car appropriate to her apparent income. Carla opted grudgingly to be poor but unencumbered. Harry found her a Volkswagen Rabbit, six years old, that Carla accepted but which she denied both her affection and routine maintenance.
“Waldo's car is leased by his business,” Zivic answered. “Otherwise, he remains a man of modest needs. On this subject, Harry also reminds us that he wants everyone's complete financial records by the end of this month if he is to prepare our tax returns.”
“Harry Bauer is a pain in the ass,” Carla muttered. Though she had to admit that thanks to Harry none of them would ever be broke. Harry could do with money what Molly could do with electronics or what Gary could do with a scalpel. Except what good was having it if you had to live as if you didn't? It's fine for people like Billy who'd be happy with the price of a cheeseburger and a TV Guide..
Billy.
Paul, she realized, didn't fully believe any of them. Except Anton, who doesn't know but probably suspects. She hadn't figured on Paul going around Molly. Maybe she should have let Gary tell the truth after all. Oh, well.
“If there's no other business,” Paul said rising, “the bar's open.”
“Paul?” Carla didn't move. “Aren't you going to tell us about Palmer Reid?”
“What about him?”
“Anton says you met with him at Windermere.”
Paul made a face. “I did not meet with him. He learned I was there and he came uninvited. I warned him not to do that again, especially at Windermere.”
“So? What did he want?”
“Just more of the same. He wants us to surrender Anton, he wants me back in the field, or so.he claims, and he wants the rest of you scattered and relocated individually. The only new thing he offered was that we can keep the funds we seized and, if you don't want to trust him, he'll put your relocation under the FBI's Witness Protection Program.”
“We're supposed to trust the FBI?” Carla smiled.
“It's academic. I said no.”
“Reid's not a man to be brushed off,” Russo warned. “You don't think he's cooking something up?”
“Reid's always cooking something up.”
“I don't know why you don't let us scratch that son of a bitch once and for all,” Carla said. “He's going to hit us sooner or later.”
“Look . . .” Paul stepped to the bar and poured a glass of wine. “Let's not even think in those terms. Reid's people will never come to Westport in force because they'd never be able to get all of us. He probably isn't even sure how many there are. I don't think he'll try to infiltrate again because I've told him I'll be obliged to kill any agent he sends in. He won't try a snatch on Anton because he knows we'll retaliate— against his family if we have to—and all he'll end up with is a swap. Palmer Reid is frustrated, humiliated and angry, but as long as we keep our heads he has no acceptable options.”
Carla was not convinced. “He's going to nail you one of these days. You're going to disappear during one of your trips and he's going to swear up and down he has no knowledge of it.”
“I've discussed that with him. He knows that Molly and Anton are to assume he's behind it, regardless of where else the evidence might point, and retaliate accordingly. More importantly, I've explained our structure to him. What we have here is a collaborative that will go right on functioning even if I walk outside and get hit by a truck. He understands that I'm no longer essential to it.”
“The heck you're not,” Molly Farrell said quietly.
“Don't start thinking that way either,” Paul told her. “My personal safety depends on Palmer Reid believing that there's no head for him to cut off.”
“So,” Anton Zivic chose a cognac, “your assessment is that he will do nothing, Paul.”
“He'll watch us, try to contain us, and keep looking for a crack he can exploit. In the meantime, I think his immediate concern is making sure what we did here can't happen in his other towns.”
“Perhaps it would not be a bad idea to stir up some trouble in one or two of them,” Zivic suggested. “Take his mind off Westport.”
Paul answered with a pained expression. It was not a new suggestion. It seemed to come up every time one or more in the group felt restless. None of them, and especially Anton, were accustomed to taking static defensive positions and leaving all initiative to the opposition. But the point was, they were no longer a tactical action group. They were retired. They had new lives, each of his own choosing. As far as Reid's other towns were concerned—there were five other “Westports” across the country that he knew of—what was happening in them was none of their b
usiness. So far, Paul had declined even to name them.
Anton Zivic accepted the cue and dismissed the subject with a wave of his glass. Perhaps over a quiet drink one day he would tell Paul that his government—his former government—had knowledge of at least two. One was certainly Wilmette, Illinois, a Westport-like suburb just northeast of Chicago. Another was Palo Alto in California. Suspected were Framingham in Massachusetts, and Fort Worth in Texas.
It would not be very difficult, were Zivic so inclined, to compile a list of towns that were likely candidates. Paul had long ago told him how Westport was chosen. It followed that the same criteria would apply to all. They would be upper-middle-class communities. Not conspicuously affluent, but comfortable, offering a lifestyle that was at least the equal of what the agents had enjoyed in the field. Like Westport, they would all be commuter towns, towns with more or less transient populations where newcomers attracted little notice. No company towns. No one-industry towns such as those in Silicon Valley. No socially competitive towns such as nearby Greenwich or Darien. A primary consideration would be finding places in which people tended to respect the privacy of their neighbors. Westport had that reputation, and for that reason it had attracted many celebrities over the years, particularly those in the arts. People left them alone.
A computer would narrow the list further. First there were all the ordinary quality-of-life considerations. Recreation, cultural activities, affordable housing and so on. Schools were not a factor. Agents were not supposed to have been there long enough to conceive, let alone raise, children. Romantic relationships with the locals were, in any case, forbidden. The computer would also exclude any towns that had career intelligence officers or retired State Department personnel in residence. It would not do to encounter a former case officer while standing in line at the supermarket.
The concept, Zivic supposed, was sound enough in theory. It was like the halfway house, but on a grander scale. Halfway towns. A way to depressurize and rehabilitate certain agents who were being retired from the field. A year or so of learning to live, under close supervision and tutoring, like normal citizens. Then relocation elsewhere under more relaxed supervision but with continued counseling. Then eventually, a more complete reabsorption into ordinary American life. A sound enough concept. It might even be called benevolent. It gave some of these people a chance to save their lives.
The halfway towns were not intended, Zivic knew, for the ordinary CIA or NSA or military intelligence field agent. Not even for those Operations Branch agents of whom so much cloak-and-dagger nonsense is written. Such personnel usually retired to become authors, lecturers, local police chiefs, registered foreign agents or lobbyists, private corporate spies and, occasionally, whistle-blowers. Those meant for the halfway towns were different. Nearly all were contract agents, free-lancers who were bound by no official constraint or code of conduct. Nor were they, like career agents, immune to criminal prosecution by informal convention among NATO countries. Many were operatives who had spent half their lifetimes in deep cover and high-stress situations. These were assassins, kidnappers, expert interrogators, even torturers. These were people who would think nothing of robbing a bank or trafficking in arms in order to finance an operation too sensitive to be funded through identifiable channels. Most were living, breathing weapons. Cocked weapons. Some were borderline psychotics, likely to choose an enemy of their own if one were not regularly provided for them. A few, like Billy, could never be allowed to retire to any environment short of a maximum-security mental institution.
The halfway town concept, first envisioned by Allen Dulles and later expanded under President Jimmy Carter, provided some with at least the chance of being salvaged. But the rehabilitative process was also an evaluative process. Though President Carter was unlikely to have known it, fully one third did not survive the relocation. They simply vanished en route to their promised new locations. Nor was there ever a need to explain their disappearance. They had, after all, been relocated with new identities. It could truthfully be said, to anyone who might inquire, that they no longer existed. Of those who did survive, few of any value were left in peace.
Anton Zivic sipped his cognac, his expression thoughtful as he studied the faces now standing about Paul's conference table. Not one of them, he was certain, would be allowed to retire to private life.
Dr. Gary Russo. An interesting case. Here is a torturer who looks into a mirror and sees an apostle looking back. He steadfastly refuses to regard himself as an assassin. He will acknowledge that he's killed. Many times. But he regards this as a quibble. He is, after all, primarily an interrogator. His way of dealing with the taking of lives is to persuade himself that those he kills were doomed in any case. It's their fault, not his, that they lay strapped to his table. Now, if they will only answer his questions, fully and truthfully, there need be no more pain, no more blood, and he will assist them to their peaceful release. Otherwise, quite a decent sort, actually. But he'd heard the answers to too many questions. Without Paul's protection, he'd have been a dead man years ago.
Carla Benedict. Once one of the very best, although still quite definitely world-class. Tiresome at times, occasionally shrewish, and yet utterly reliable and unquestionably loyal. In recent years, however, she'd developed a habit of toying with her targets. She could take a man to her bed, laugh with him, enjoy him, give pleasure in return, and then, the next morning, cheerily bring him a breakfast laced with strychnine if she hadn't cut his throat while he slept. Perhaps it came of spending too much time with Dr. Russo. He'd taught her to linger. He had not taught her to control her tongue. Nevertheless, as Paul had observed, if one must live near a volcano, it's best to be near one that smokes.
And Molly. Dear, sweet-natured Molly. Had there ever been a nicer, more loving, more generous young lady on the KGB's list of Most Wanted?
“I'd better think about locking up,” said Paul, draining his glass. “Molly, I wish you'd join me for dinner. You could probably do with a change of menu.”
He held Molly's eyes to show that it was more than a casual invitation. Zivic saw that as well. He also saw that Carla was making no move to accept the coat being urged on her by Gary Russo.
“What about your reporter friend?” The question was blurted more than asked.
“What about her, Carla?” Paul asked evenly.
“Is that under control or isn't it?”
Paul's voice took a hard edge. “It was until three days ago. We'll just have to hope that two fresh Westport suicides do not rekindle her interest.”
“You're taking her to Switzerland, aren't you?”
“Yes, Carla. As a matter of fact, I am.”
“Why?”
His eyes flashed. “I beg your pardon?”
“If you're getting serious about her, we don't like it.”
”Umm!” Anton and Molly made the sound in unison.
“Okay, I don't like it.” Carla took a breath and plunged. “It was one thing, cozying up to her to find out what she knew. That turned out to be nothing. Why are you still seeing this kid?”
“All right, now listen. . . .”
Molly Farrell stepped in quickly. “What Carla means,” she shot a warning glance at the other woman, “is that you have a perfect right to see anyone you please. I think we just wish it could have been someone other than an investigative reporter who is also the daughter of a dangerous New York cop.”
“For openers,” Paul checked his temper, “the father's not a cop anymore and Susan is a long way from being an investigative reporter. Secondly, the father doesn't even know I exist because Susan—like me— prefers to keep her relationships private. Which brings up a third point. . . .”
“Don't say it's none of our business, Paul,” Molly said quietly. “You'd be just as concerned if one of us hit on a combination like that.”
“All the same, what I do with . . .” Paul lost his train of thought because Anton Zivic had affected a pained expression and was rapidly shaking hi
s head.
“Molly,” Zivic touched her shoulder, “to the heart of the matter, please.”
Molly fidgeted, shrugged, and finally spread her hands. “We're a little sort of jealous.” She shrugged again, embarrassed.
The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) Page 12