The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (29 page)

“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 ac
tion 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, some
times 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 every
body very nervous.”

“I'll have to get back to you.”

Roger Clew pulled
o
ut 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, un
knowable and therefore difficult to anticipate, larger
than life. The second result was that Roger Clew's un
sought role resulted in the rapid growth of his own
career until, two years before Westport, Crew was re
called to Washington and promoted to Deputy Under
Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

Even more rapidly, Paul grew into his own acciden
tal creation. With the guidance of Billy McHugh and
others he was soon dictating rules of engagement, con
tractual terms; requiring mandatory physical condition
ing; 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 Eu
rope. 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 my
self?”

“The reporter lady,” Billy nodded. “Were you afraid
I
d 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 enti
tled. 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. Don
ovan, 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 be
cause 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 Ave
nue 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 Admin
istration? 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,” Dono
van 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 Enforce
ment. 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 investigat
ing 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 in
volve 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 Lof
tus. 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.”

“Which is what Loftus told me.”

“So,” Donovan continued, “since he's an old friend,
and since I'd somehow put him on the spot, I tried to
put him at ease. I made light of the Loftus question and
asked about his family. Then, after some small talk, I
asked what he could tell me about another name, assur
ing him that the two inquiries were totally unrelated.”

Lesko felt a tingling at his neck. “You asked about
the Bannerman guy.”

“Yes.” Donovan paused, not for effect but to choose
his words. “The name, I'm convinced, meant nothing to
him. He agreed to punch it up. Then, whatever ap
peared on his console, I heard him mutter ‘Jesus Christ.’
When he came back on the phone he was clearly un
comfortable and evasive. I told him I wanted an answer
and would keep making phone calls until I got one. He
said he'd get back to me and hung up. I stewed about
this for a while and was about to call you when another
call came. This one was from Palmer Reid. Ever heard
of him?”

Lesko shook his head. -

“Reid is old-line CIA. Princeton, wealthy family,
very establishment. Probably considered not bright enough for the family's brokerage business so they
steered him into foreign service. With his family con
nections and his own devious nature, Reid did quite
well, rising to the Directorate of Operations for Western
Europe and then for South America. The Directorate of
Operations is responsible for clandestine activities. I'm
told that three different CIA directors have tried to get
rid of Palmer Reid because none of them have been
able to find much tangible result in whatever he does
nor could they even figure out exactly what it was Palm
er's people were doing.”

“Come on,*'`Lesko snapped his fingers. “Bannerman, Reid, South America, Elena. What's the connec
tion?”

“It's better if I take you through the sequence.”

“Okay. So the Reid guy called you. What did he say?”

“He acknowledged that Loftus worked for him but
only indirectly. Loftus is attached to a special planning unit and one of its jobs is to plot out a long-range anti
drug strategy. As Reid tells it, and this addresses three of
those elements, they picked up a tip that you might
have had recent contact with the Elena woman. Loftus
decided to check it out himself. He was not authorized
to do so. He exceeded his authority. Reid says it served Loftus right that you roughed him up, and as far as he's
concerned the matter is closed.”

“You believe him?”

Donovan hesitated. “I have no reason not to. In this
case.”

“What about Susan's boyfriend?”

More hesitation.