The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  He took Paul with him to Berlin, where they found one of the triggermen living in the British sector. This man knew of Billy McHugh. He was terrified. He begged. It wasn't personal, he said. They were told to take no chances with the woman known as Mama. Paul asked Billy to wait outside, to leave him alone with this man. Billy told him, for the first of many times, “This ain't a game.” Then he cut the man's throat.

  It was Paul who shot the second triggerman. They followed him into the washroom of a service station off the autobahn. Billy had a gun this time that jammed, or so he later claimed. The man whipped his hat toward Paul's face and clawed at a pistol in his belt. Paul caught the hat in flight, took careful aim and fired. The man slammed backward into the toilet stall. He blinked once and died.

  “How you doing?” Billy asked him afterward.

  “You let him go for it, didn't you. You wanted to see if I could handle it.”

  “My gun jammed. How do you feel?”

  “I'm not sure. Not bad. Not good, either.”

  “We got three,” Billy said, “The main ones. Go home now, Paul. Get married or something.”

  There was a girl. She'd driven him to the airport. But now that seemed so long ago. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don't know. Hang around.”

  “You're going to finish it.”

  “Sooner or later. It could take a while. The others will hear about these three. They'll dig a hole.”

  “I want them, Billy. It's not even just for my mother anymore.”

  “What else is there?”

  “They set up their own people. You don't do that. You take care of your own.”

  “You talk like her, too,” Billy said, then he sat silent for a while. “She was going to take me to Paris. Show me about art and stuff.”

  “She took me there. I was eighteen.”

  “She was showing me from books. But they got burned, mostly.”

  “Go with me, Billy. I'll teach you.”

  “No.” He squirmed as he said it. “Your mother was . . . she didn't care if she had to go slow sometimes. I'm not that smart.”

  “Everybody's smart, Billy. We're just smart about different things.”

  “You wouldn't make fun of me?”

  “Let's go to Paris.” He put a hand on Billy's shoulder. “We'll teach each other.”

  It was four months later that they found one of the Austrians. The other one, the policeman, committed suicide two weeks after that. A month later, in Salzburg again, one of the Americans was shot to death at a traffic light. Paul learned of it in the newspaper.

  “Did you do this, Billy?”

  “No.”

  “Any idea who did?”

  “Guy I know. Johnny Waldo.” `

  “Why?” Paul had learned not to bother asking Billy how he knew things. “What's he got to do with this?”

  “I told him what you said.”

  “What I said?”

  “That we take care of our own.”

  Another ten days passed. Paul was taking breakfast alone in his small pension off Vienna's Schweitzergarten. He was approached by a young man, American, not much older than himself. His name was Roger Clew, two years out of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. Clew pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket. Holding it between two fingers, he let in unfold.

  “This is . . um, a white flag,'' he said. “May I sit down?”

  Paul nodded toward a vacant chair, his own fingers resting against the pistol under his arm.

  Clew asked if he might reach for his photo ID. Paul nodded. He showed it. “I'm with the American Consulate,” the young man said nervously. “I'm not a spy. I have a nuts-and-bolts job with a trade mission. They sent me because I'm no one you should be mad at.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “We . . . they . . . tried to talk to some of your people. They said we'd have to deal through Mama's Boy. One of them just called. He suggested I come have a cup of coffee with you.”

  Þaul kept his face blank. Your people? Aside from Billy, who could this guy be talking about? And now it's Mama 's Boy?

  “Why are you here?” Paul asked.

  “To ask about a truce. To try to make peace with you.” He gestured toward the street with his thumb. “And them.”

  “Them?” Paul's brow was creased.

  Roger Clew clearly thought Paul was being cute. “I saw three outside. They let me. I would assume you have at least two more covering the back and one on the roof.”

  Paul still had only the dimmest notion of what might be going on here. Better, he thought, not to let that show. “What's your offer?”

  “For you? Reparations, an apology, disciplinary action against the people involved in your mother's death. That's if there are any left.”

  “And what do you want from me?”

  “The message is, ‘Please tell them all it's okay for them to get back to work.’ For the record, I don't know what that means and I don't want to.”

  It was becoming clearer. Billy had talked to a man named Waldo who was obviously not a novice at killing. We take care of our own. He, they, must have talked to others. But how was it possible for anyone to believe that he, Paul Bannerman, controlled them? He'd just turned twenty-four, for Pete's sake. And he'd been in Europe less than eight months. But he was not about to ask that question of Roger Clew. Instead he asked, “Why would I trust you?”

  “Not me,” he shook his head firmly. “I'm neutral. I don't even like this kind of shit.”

  “Okay, them then.”

  “You want my opinion, trust has nothing to do with it. It's a question of need. Whether I like it or not, sometimes our country needs people like your crowd. But now they won't work unless you say so. They don't even want to talk except through you. You've made everybody very nervous.”

  “I'll have to get back to you.”

  Roger Clew pulled out a card and laid it in front of Paul. “The sooner you do, the sooner I'm out of this. Call me and I'll set up a meet so you and our spooks can sit down and reason together.”

  “No meeting, no spooks. Just you.”

  The young foreign service officer spread his hands. “I told you, this isn't what I do.”

  “Suit yourself.” Paul folded his napkin. “But it's you or nobody.”

  That was the start of it. Even now, from a distance of fifteen years, it seemed no less bizarre. He'd formed a trade union. The notion had never occurred to him, he'd done absolutely nothing in that direction, but there it was. You want something done? Talk to Mama's Boy. Tell him what, but you have to tell him why. Then he'll tell you who, when, and also if.

  “Mama's Boy said no? What does he mean, no?’*

  “He says it shouldn't be done.”

  “Okay. Get someone else.”

  “You don't understand, sir. He says don't do it at all.”

  Paul's reason for insisting that he would only work through Roger Clew was simple. Paul's instinct told him that at the age of twenty-four he would almost certainly be at a disadvantage, and possibly manipulated, in any direct dealings with experienced covert-operations people. The arrangement had two other results. It made him seem all the more shadowy, mysterious, unknowable and therefore difficult to anticipate, larger than life. The second result was that Roger Clew's unsought role resulted in the rapid growth of his own career until, two years before Westport, Crew was recalled to Washington and promoted to Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

  Even more rapidly, Paul grew into his own accidental creation. With the guidance of Billy McHugh and others he was soon dictating rules of engagement, contractual terms; requiring mandatory physical conditioning; controlling the disbursement of funds; curtailing free-lance or criminal activities; even securing medical care and death benefits. Paul originated most of these, and managed all of them. Over the next dozen years he attracted the best of the best. Or the best of the worst, as Roger Clew would characterize them. First Vienna, then Berlin, then
Tehran, and finally Rome, where it at last began to wear him down. Roger Clew had gone home. His liaison role was assumed by Palmer Reid, an old-time CIA elitist who had headed the Directorate of Operations for both South America and Western Europe. Reid considered that Paul Bannerman's operation was intolerably lacking in control, specifically his own. Paul ignored him.

  The black Lab froze into a point, fixed upon two seagulls who were breakfasting nearby. Impudently

  close. The dog sprang into a chase, scattering them, then trotted on, pleased with himself.

  “Billy?”

  “Yep?”

  “Did you know I've been keeping company myself?”

  “The reporter lady,” Billy nodded. “Were you afraid Id hurt her, Paul? That why you never mentioned her until now?”

  “Come on, Billy.” Paul punched him lightly. “That never crossed my mind.”

  “That's good because it's okay with me. You're entitled. She real nice?”

  “She is. Yes.”

  “Why don't you bring her into Mario's? I see what she looks like, I can look after her.” Billy winced at his own choice of words. “You know what I mean,” he said.

  “I know. Anyway, I'm not sure how much more I'll be seeing of her.”

  “How come? You like her, right?”

  ”A lot of reasons.” Fifteen years of reasons. Paul pushed to his feet.

  Billy stood with him. “Paul,” he said again, “I sure do like it here. Westport, I mean.”

  “I know.”

  “If you say it has to be, you got my word I'll either take the pipe or let you kill me. Even so. . . .”

  Paul waited.

  “Just to be on the safe side, I'd make it clean and sudden if I was you.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Lesko slept until almost noon. On his belly. No dreams. It was more than he'd hoped for and in consequence he hadn't set his alarm. The telephone woke him.

  “You know who this is?” came the voice on the other end. It was Buzz Donovan.

  “Yeah,” Lesko yawned. Now what?

  “I'd like to talk to you.”

  “So talk.”

  “Not on the phone. Can you come into the city?”

  “I'm coming in anyway in about an hour.” He was due to make his rounds of the four Beckwith Hotels in the midtown area.

  “Do you remember where I bought you lunch to celebrate your new job?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Meet me there at precisely 1:15. I'll be waiting.”

  “Okay.”

  The call left Lesko as much annoyed as curious. Donovan, he assumed, had found out something about the FBI guy, Robert Loftus. Or possibly Lesko was in for some heat for working the guy over. But then why all the dumb cloak-and-dagger stuff? The lunch place would be the Yale Club on Vanderbilt, across from Grand Central Station. Precisely 1:15 meant Donovan would be watching from the second floor to see if Lesko had grown a tail. <¡

  Do you know who this is? he says. Remember where we had lunch? he says.

  Good work, Buzz. Very smooth. Except if it's because you think my phone might be wired, all anyone would have to do is hang around outside for the next hour and see where I go. If you're worried that someone tapped your own phone, it's a little stupid to think you're fooling them by not using your name. Lesko climbed into the shower.

  At 1:15, having killed five minutes at a magazine rack in Grand Central, Lesko crossed Vanderbilt Avenue and trotted up the steps into the raised lobby of the Yale Club. He ignored the are-you-sure-you're-in-the-right-place look of the deskman and climbed the stairs to the dining room, a small overnight bag in one hand. Buzz Donovan waved him in from his window table. He was not smiling.

  “What's the suitcase, Ray? You going someplace?”

  “Bolivia.” Lesko held up the bag and rubbed his fingers together to show that it contained money. “Then maybe Brazil to lay low for a while.”

  Donovan frowned. “You're not going to tell me?”

  Lesko looked skyward. “I'm staying overnight in the city, for Christ's sake. At the Beckwith Regency. What the hell's with you today?”

  “All right.” Donovan raised both hands and dropped his voice. Lesko took a chair. “Ray, I asked you last night if you were involved in anything.”

  “And I said if I am I don't know it. I'm not any smarter today.”

  “Nothing involving the Drug Enforcement Administration? Or any other United States Intelligence agency?”

  Lesko bit back his impatience. “The Loftus guy. You got something or don't you?”

  “Robert Loftus was with the FBI at one time,” Donovan answered. “But no longer.”

  “Is he with the Fed at all? Or has he gone private?”

  “He's still with the government.”

  “Well? What agency?”

  “That's what's curious. Very curious.”

  Lesko showed his teeth. Buzz Donovan. Sweetheart of a guy. Friend of the family. Known him forever. But he's a lawyer. Try getting a simple fucking answer out of a lawyer.

  “You want me to guess? I'll guess.” Lesko drained a glass of water. “He transferred over to Drug Enforcement. Now you want to know why I think so. Three reasons. One, it's the new glamour agency and a lot of FBI types are transferring over because the DEA beats the shit out of chasing down stolen cars and investigating mail frauds. Second, because you just brought up the DEA. Third, because last night he was asking me about this Elena.”

  Donovan shook his head. “He's not with DEA. First thing this morning I called a friend of mind at Justice to ask about Loftus. He called back a few minutes later and said Loftus transferred out of the Justice Department five years ago but the computer says his new assignment is classified.”

  “Then how do you know it's not DEA?”

  “Because DEA transfers are not classified,” Donovan answered reasonably. ”A classified transfer has to involve national security. That's why I also asked you about other intelligence agencies.”

  “So who's he with? Do you know or don't you?”

  Donovan answered with a vague toss of his head.

  “You're not going to tell me for a while, right? You want to play secret agent some more.”

  “Might you have been followed, by the way?”

  “No,” Lesko snapped, causing heads to turn, “I was not fucking followed. And I'm getting tired of this subject, I'm not sure I'd even give a shit.”

  Donovan raised his hands again. Another calming gesture. “My friend at Justice called me back a half-hour, later. He was now in a considerably agitated state and demanded to know why I was asking about Robert Loftus. Apparently when he accessed Loftus's file, he set off an alarm somewhere else.”

  “And someone leaned on him.”

  “Exactly.” Donovan paused as the waiter stopped to take their drink order. Lesko asked for a club soda. “I told him you'd caught Loftus following you and you simply wanted to know the reason for it. He put me on hold for a minute and then came back and said it was a mistake.”