The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (28 page)

“Are you Paul?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He held up the book. “She gave me this. It's stories
and poems. I read some.”

“You were her friend?”

“Still am.”

“Do you know what happened here?”

“Not yet.” He turned to walk away. “Go back home,
Paul.”

 
“I'm staying. So are you, until you talk to me.” Paul
reached for his arm, jerked it backward, then danced
nimbly aside as the older man's foot slashed out toward
his knee. Paul was quick. He hooked the man's leg with
a kick of his own and spun him. He moved in, expecting
the older man to fall, but he was surprisingly nimble.
The man used his own momentum to complete a grace
ful crouching turn, and as he rose out of it a knife had
suddenly appeared in his hand. It was a skinning knife,
short and ugly, designed for disemboweling. The man
held it close against his chest. Paul backed off, stripping
his jacket and wrapping it around one arm, and as
sumed a combat stance. The man frowned and straight
ened.

“Where'd you learn that?” he asked. “Army?”

Paul may have nodded.

“Don't do that. Use your feet against a knife. Kick or
run. Running's better.”

Paul waited.

“You look like her. You got guts like her?”

“If someone killed her, I want him.”

“No police,''
he said.

“I've tried the police.”

“Let's go.”
Bi
lly turned once more and walked.

She was not, Paul soon learned, what the reporter
from
Stern
thought she was. Not exactly. On the other hand, she wasn't what he'd grown up thinking she was, either. It was never quite clear to him whether she was
an art buyer who had been recruited by American In
telligence or an agent who operated under that cover.
Or how long she'd been involved with them.  Or
whether she actually ran field-contract agents or simply
operated a safe house at 16 Gruenstrasse. Her frequent
trips to Europe had begun while he was in grade school.
When his father died, and when he went off to college,
she moved there and stayed, flying Paul over during
school breaks, meeting him in London, Rome or Paris.

He did, of course, question Billy about her. But every
question concerning what she did would be answered in terms of what she was. Kind, brave, smart, pretty,
nice. Paul thought at first there might have been a love
affair between them, hard as it was to imagine his
mother and this silent, frightening man together. But
bit by bit, the picture of another sort of relationship
emerged. For whatever reason, Billy had come to re
gard her as a saint. He trusted no one else. No one else
could locate him
when he was between assignments
and not at 16 Gruenstrasse. No one else could talk to him, much less control him. No one but the woman
known as Mama.

Of the two men who died with her, one was Ameri
can, the other a double agent, a traitor to the Eastern
bloc who'd been spirited up the Danube from Budapest
and was awaiting transport to Washington for interroga
tion. The killers had come down from Berlin, assisted by
two Austrians, one of them a ranking policeman. The
double agent was not tracked, he was betrayed. The
men who had betrayed him, in favor of a prisoner swap
they considered more beneficial, were Americans.
There were three involved. Billy followed the rumors to
the door of one of these, a deputy section chief in Salz
burg. Billy questioned him, with the aid of his skinning
knife, then burned down his house around him. The
other two could wait.

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 Schweitzer
garten. 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 Ser
vice. 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 Consul
ate,” 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.