“I don't know, sir. But I think we should keep in mind the possibility that he's just going skiing with a lady friend.”
“The arrogance of the man.”
“Sir?”
“I'm agreeing with you, Robert. For the sake of argument. Bannerman is, in a very real sense, a traitor to his country. He is a mutineer who has expelled legitimate authority from what is in fact a government facility.”
“Um, are you talking about Westport, sir?”
“I am.” Palmer Reid began to hiss. “He is a man who feels so secure in his treachery that he is free to travel as he pleases, when he pleases, and has the gall to threaten retaliation if he or his killers are interfered with in any way. And now he has the effrontery to be taking off on a carefree, extended ski trip to Switzerland with the young lady of his choice.”
“Switzerland is just a guess, sir. We haven't confirmed that.”
“And,” Palmer Reid ignored the reminder, “that, Robert, is the best case scenario. Do you realize that? Even allowing for the most charitable interpretation of his behavior, even imputing no sinister motive whatsoever, that behavior constitutes an utter outrage to every decent American.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But we don't really believe in best-case scenarios, do we?”
“Sir,” Loftus couldn't help himself, “I must tell you that I lean strongly in that direction.”
“That's fine, Robert,” Reid said after a pause. “We must encourage alternative points of view. If we agree all the time, then one of us is unnecessary. Isn't that so, Robert?”
”Um, yes, sir.”
“Try this scenario.” Palmer Reid began reflecting aloud, unevenly, as if assembling the pieces as he spoke. “Bannerman has reached Elena. He has done it through Lesko. Let's grant for the moment that the daughter is merely a pawn and that Bannerman has used her to reach Lesko. Elena has told Bannerman everything, all about our relationship with her, in return for ... money? No. Elena has far more of that than Bannerman. For protection? For the use of Bannerman's killers to further cover her tracks? Yes. Quite possibly for that.”
Loftus said nothing.
“Bannerman in turn has told Lesko . . . what? Certainly about Westport. Possibly about all the other Westports. Certainly of our association with Elena. Our involvement in his partner's death. So that Lesko can take further revenge? Go public where Bannerman might not? Use his daughter to plant a story in the New York Post? Help me, Robert.”
“I have no idea, sir.” Loftus gave up.
“Mr. Donovan is involved, of course. Though possibly as a dupe. Yes. Lesko duped Donovan into using his Washington contacts to determine how much we know. You see, Robert? You sniffed them out last night. You made them break from cover. Donovan calls the Justice Department, I call Donovan, Donovan promptly meets with Lesko, then Lesko promptly rushes off to another meeting, calling attention to himself by going straight to a luxury hotel we know he can scarcely afford. Rather clumsy, that. His meeting, quite possibly, is with Bannerman himself.”
“We'll see, sir. We'll watch the hotel.”
“For heaven's sake.”
“Sir?”
“Or,” Palmer Reid continued, his voice stronger, as if struck by a revelation, “Bannerman has not yet met Elena but intends to do so in Switzerland. Why else would he go there?”
“Possibly to ski, sir,” Loftus said and wished he hadn't.
“Robert,” Reid said sharply, “how many coincidences must pile upon coincidences before you begin to suspect a pattern? Has Bannerman ever gone off on a holiday before within five days of returning from another? Has he ever before been known to travel with a woman?”
“Offhand, I don't think so. However, Mr. Reid. . . .*'
“But the details are really neither here nor there* Robert. It's Bannerman's ultimate intention that matters. And the worst-case scenario assumes that Bannerman's intention is to bring down everything I've spent my lifetime building. He could bring down this nation's entire intelligence system, Robert. Do you realize that? He could bring down the President.”
“Sir, I really think we should sleep on that one.”
“Of course, Robert. You and I both.”
“Sir, why don't I hop the shuttle and come down there so we can thrash this out?”
“Have you been to Westport yet?”
“Westport?”
“You remember, Robert. It's a town up in Connecticut. You told me on Monday that you'd have a look around yourself.”
“Sir, I was referring to the activities of Lesko and his daughter. I can't go to Westport. Bannerman knows me.”
“Who's the man with you now?”
“Doug Poole, sir.” .
“Send him, then. You go to the Beckwith Regency to see with whom, if not Bannerman, Lesko is meeting. If Bannerman is in Westport, or after he returns to Westport, tell Poole I want an hour-by-hour log of his activities.”
“Yes, sir.”
“In the meantime, you will check with the airlines and confirm Bannerman's destination.”
“Yes, sir.”
“For heaven's sake.”
“Sir?”
“You know, I've just had an idea.”
“What would that be, sir?”
“All the momentum thus far has been Bannerman's. Perhaps it's time we gave him something else to think about.”
“I'm not sure I follow, sir. What's your idea?”
“It's something else I'm going to sleep on, Robert. In the meantime, when Burdick reports in, tell him I want to see him right away and put him on that shuttle.”
“No, sir.”
“What was that, Robert?”
“I'm not going to do that. You don't want Burdick yet, sir. Please.”
A long silence. “Robert . . . ?”
“Yes sir?”
“Nothing. That will be all, Robert.”
Charles Whitlow, Palmer Reid's personal assistant, waited until Reid broke the connection before replacing the receiver on his extension phone. He folded his hands across his lap, drew his knees together, and waited.
“Comments?” Reid asked.
“As you've noted in the past, sir, Loftus does shrink from difficult decisions on occasion.”
“Recommendations?”
“Presume the worst case. Act decisively. One destroys a chain by destroying a link.”
“My thought exactly.”
“In fairness to Loftus, sir, he may have a point in not using Burdick. Not much finesse there, sir.”
“You have something better in mind, I take it.”
“Shall I outline, sir?”
“No, Charles. Execute.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Decisively, Charles.”
“Of course, sir.”
CHAPTER 11
Doug Poole was elated. Here he was, Doug Poole, actually in Westport. During his five years in Army Intelligence, and especially in the two years since Loftus recruited him to Reid's unit, hardly a week had gone by without his hearing some wild story about the Westporters.
He knew the old man hated them. But he sure didn't. He thought they were fantastic. They were everything he used to hope his own job would be.
Just being here. On the Post Road. Not fifty yards from the travel agency where Paul Bannerman, Mama's Boy in the flesh, was probably sitting right now. With luck he'd get a look at him. Or Billy McHugh. Carla Benedict. John Waldo. Any of them. These people were legends.
He'd lucked out on this one. Loftus had made it clear that he didn't want him going to Westport. It was the old man who had insisted. Just watch, Loftus told him. Keep your car doors locked, with you inside. Pick a spot where you. can watch Bannerman's office, take a few pictures of who comes and goes, don't let anyone see your camera. Don't get out of the car at all. If you have to take a leak, either do it in a cup or drive over the line into Norwalk. If you do spot any of Bannerman's people, for Christ's sake try to resist asking for their autographs.
; Loftus. He could be a prick when he wanted to be. He could be patronizing. But Poole knew he wasn't the only one who'd give up a month's leave just for the chance to watch some of these people in action. They were the all-stars. They weren't company people. They were all contract agents. Which was a lot more interesting because between them they had probably worked for every Western intelligence agency at one time or another without ever having to do any of the bullshit work.
Bannerman himself had worked for the CIA and for Army Intelligence, which gave Doug Poole a feeling of special kinship with him, and he'd either worked for the National Security Agency or had advanced infiltration and weapons training with them at Fort Meade. Billy McHugh and Carla Benedict had worked for ... you name it. The Israeli Mossad, MI-6, and both the French and German counterterrorist units. And Anton Zivic was a full colonel in Soviet Military Intelligence, the GRU. Zivic. There was another one they'd like to get into Fort Meade. Except Zivic would probably never see it from the outside again. Yeah. Fort Meade. That place was the nuts.
Poole, like Paul Bannerman, had trained there. Just in surveillance techniques, though, along with a few other agents and a lot of cops from across the country. But the facility was mind-boggling. Talk about towns being taken over. Fort Meade was a small city, about fifty thousand people living and working there, all self-contained inside three barbed-wire fences. The middle one was electrified. And the barbed wire on top of the other two slanted inward as if to keep people from getting out. No place on earth was more secret, more secure, except maybe the Kremlin. It even had its own TV station and power supply.
Everybody talks about the CIA, Doug Poole thought, but the National Security Agency must have ten times the staff and twenty times the budget. Their main job had to do with spy satellites, long-range electronic surveillance from ships and planes, code-breaking and the like. But almost anything could be going on at Fort Meade. In some ways they had it made. No one looking over their shoulders. No one making movies about them. No congressional hearings, no spy novels. Even Robert Ludlum didn't give a shit about the NSA because he thinks there's no glamour there—and they hardly ever shoot people or get laid.
Doug Poole smiled.
You know what's funny? Robert Ludlum even lives here someplace. Right here in Westport All this shit going on all around him. Chances are he's even had a pop or two at Mario's.
Hey wait . . . !
That little guy just getting ready to come out. You know who that looks like?
Doug Poole raised his camera and peered through the telephoto lens. That's him, he thought. Anton Zivic. Bad angle for a shot. Too much reflection on the windshield. He picked up his notepad and scribbled in the entry. Thursday, 4:27 P.M., Anton Zivic exiting Luxury Travel Associates. Must have been there since Poole arrived at 3:10.
Have to get a better angle. Can't leave car. Move it. Up to the other end by Herman's Sporting Goods.
Damn.
Poole glanced into his rearview mirror. Some guy was double-parked, blocking him. Poole tapped his horn. Come on. Move. The guy made a wait-a-minute gesture and pointed up ahead to show he was waiting for a space. Hey, schmuck. This is a space too, if you'll back up and let me out. Poole lowered his window.
“Come on, will you? Back up.”
“What?”
“I said back up.”
“Five seconds.”
Zivic was out the door. Shit! Poole snatched up his camera and stepped out of his car, one leg, his eyes on Bannerman's storefront. He stopped. The hell with this. Loftus would see the picture and know it wasn't taken from inside the car and he'd have his ass. That was Doug Poole's second-from-last thought.
The last, as he felt his car door slam against his leg and then something else crunch hard into the side of his neck, was that the crazy fuck behind him must have thought he was getting out to start a fight over a goddamned parking space. The guy was hitting him. Pushing him back inside. And now, through a white sparkly haze, Poole could see his face. It couldn't be a fight. The face didn't even look mad. No expression at all. And now the guy . . . short guy . . . white hair . . . was helping him sit up straight . . . straightening his head . . . arms on both sides of his neck.
That was all Doug Poole remembered. Except that the man was friendly now. Talking to him. Gesturing with his hands. But that part must have been a dream.
John Waldo kept up an animated chat with the unconscious young man long enough for any passerby who thought he'd seen an act of violence to conclude that he must have been mistaken. Just two men talking. The young one must have slipped. Still some ice on the ground.
That settled, Waldo returned to his own car, parked it, then walked back to Doug Poole's car and slipped behind the wheel. At the Herman's curb cut, he signaled Anton Zivic with his horn, gestured in the general direction of Gary Russo's home and office, then flipped his turn signal.
Anton Zivic had agreed without hesitation to assume Paul's duties during the coming three weeks. He had just spent two hours being briefed on various matters that might require his attention during that period, including a review of the instructions each of the others had in the event of several classifications of emergency. Paul expected no trouble, he said, although Palmer Reid almost certainly knew something of his plans by now and, knowing Reid, just might be emboldened to try an exploratory probe. But it would be only that, Paul felt sure, and if it happened Anton should take care that no one else unnecessarily escalated it into something more.
As for the question, which Paul raised last, of Anton taking over all administrative duties for the next full year, Anton agreed that it was a burden which, in fairness, ought to be shared. He certainly had the experience, having commanded a staff of thirty and run ten times that number of field agents in his former life. But, selfishly perhaps, the simpler and more gracious nature of his present life had far greater appeal. There was also the question of whether he could ever hope to inspire the sort of loyalty that Paul enjoyed with these people. His people. Nearly all of whom were essentially ungovernable, and yet they chose to be governed by Paul. Some who feared nothing on earth chose to fear Paul. Or chose to love him. It was astonishing, when one thought of it. For most of them, a word such as love had scarcely entered their lives. Paul did not fear them and they knew it. He admired them and they knew it. He loved them and they knew it because they saw it in his eyes and his actions and they also heard it in his words. Could the answer be as simple as that? Even with men and women such as these?
On the matter of being the first to rotate into Paul's position, Zivic knew as he departed Paul's office that the answer would ultimately be yes. Fair was fair. And a year was only a year. Also, as he left Paul's office, he saw that his new responsibilities had already begun. Because there was John Waldo driving off in a car that was not his own, with a passenger who should not have been there. A young man, large, blond hair, apparently asleep. John pointing to Dr. Russo's residence. Zivic climbed into his car and followed. “It's all yours, Anton,” Paul said to him, offering his hand. “And thank you.”
So it begins.
Anton Zivic's reflective mood stayed with him as he wound through the wooded residential streets of Westport. Three years since he had joined Paul here. Almost nine years before that when he had first set eyes on Paul, looking down at him from a hovering helicopter, Paul looking back over the sights of a grenade launcher. It was a face he'd known only from the photographs in a dossier that was astonishingly thick for one so young.
Mama's Boy.
Paul had been in Iran for less than two months then, operating under a diplomatic cover, although Colonel Zivic knew that diplomacy was the last thing the Americans had in mind when they brought him in from Germany. Iran was in chaos. The Shah had departed. Reprisals against Savak and many foreigners had begun. Then, as the American Embassy was being taken in Tehran, Paul found himself stranded in the Talish Mountains north of Tabriz where he and his guides had been negotiating with Kurdish tribesmen to establish a secur
e evacuation corridor into Turkey. The Soviets, whose border was less than twenty kilometers away and who realized he was now trapped there, saw an opportunity to take an important American operative. He would simply disappear, missing and presumed murdered by either the Kurds or the Shiites. Someday, perhaps, he might resurface as part of a prisoner exchange, broken and wrung dry in the meantime. The Soviets had no particular plan for Paul, as far as Zivic knew. Only that he was a bird in the hand and he was close enough to their border for it to be argued that he had crossed it for the purpose of espionage.
The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) Page 18