The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (60 page)

“Head games,” Billy McHugh muttered to himself as
he crouched invisibly within the spread of one of Am
bassador Pollard's juniper trees.

He did not like head games. Not that Anton wasn't smart. And not that Billy didn't understand about con
fusing the enemy, giving him other things to worry about. But shooting half his people did that, too.

Instead, now we have pretend shootings. Glenn
Cook thinks that's great because it gives him a chance to
show off. Carla wouldn't have pretended. She'd have popped Reid the first time he took out the garbage.
Which is probably why Zivic wants her and Russo out of
the country.

The only one doing anything useful was Molly.
That's if she's doing what he thought she was doing.

Billy liked Anton. Except maybe for the head games. Which he knew Anton couldn't help because he was still
a Russian. Basically. The Russians are good at games.
The Israeli's aren't bad, either. The British are lousy
because they always get too cute, probably because
they're mostly fags. The only time they were good was against the Germans because the Germans always used
logic and they thought everybody else did, which is why
nothing they ever figured out was ever right.

Paul plays head games sometimes. But his are differ
ent and he probably doesn't even know he does it. What
he does, he tells the truth and he never bluffs. Nobody
ever believes him so they go and get ready for him to do
something besides what he said. Which explains Reid. Reid always loses to Paul. Reid even knows it. But he
thinks as soon as he starts believing Paul, Paul will pick
then to start lying to him, and then Mama's Boy will
have him by the balls again.

A shadow moved.

Waldo. Down by the house.

He'd never seen anybody who could move as quiet
as Waldo. Janet Herzog was close. And he wasn't too bad
himself. But nobody was like John.

Billy waited.

“Two men.” He heard Waldo's voice before he saw
him. “They got a third tied up and they're working him over.”

“Could you see who?”

“I just heard. They're in the kitchen. I think they're
killing him.”

“What'
ll
you bet it's that guy Loftus?”

“We're here. Let's go ask.”

“Zivic says report first.”

“We ask. Then we report.”

Loftus knew he was dying.

The voices, the lights, were becoming distant. He couldn't tell whether he'd stopped hurting so badly or
whether the hurts had all come together into one throb
bing mass. His face was wrecked.

We're sorry about this, Gorby had said. If it was up to
us, if we had anything with us, we'd have given you some pills to knock you out first.

That told Loftus he was dead. This wasn't punish
ment. This was so it would look like Bannerman did it
and Reid would have another photograph to show,
probably in another car trunk just over the Westport
line.

Son of a bitch. His wife would have to identify him.
She'd have to see what they did to his face before they
pulled up the sheet. Then Reid at his funeraJ
service.
Giving
a speech. His arm around Katherine. Telling the
kids: Anything you need, you just call your Uncle
Palmer. Son of a bitch.

Burns, the bastard, isn't sorry. All Burns cares about
is not making a mess. Use the kitchen. The kitchen floor.
Then he sits down and laces on an old pair of work
shoes. Kicking shoes. Each kick measured. Taking his
time. Nothing personal, Mr. Loftus. Don't try to duck.
It'll be over quicker.

Hallucinations now. Shadows moving. Burns starts to
throw another kick but a shadow falls across him and he
freezes. His hands go up to his throat. Like he's choking
himself. Blood squirting through his fingers, pouring
down his shirt. Loftus knew it must be all in his head
because now Burns is doing this tap-dance. This shuffle.
And his feet are kicking out again but they're going
every which way. Slipping, sliding, splashing in his own
blood. Good, you prick. You're so worried about messes,
how do you like that one?

Another shadow. Another voice. Gorby down on the
floor. A shadow on his back, too. That one's moving now.
Getting up.

“I'll ask you again.
”
John Waldo stepped away from
Gorby's writhing body. He waited for Gorby's eyes to
focus on Walter Burns, to watch his partner finish dying.
“Why are you doing this?”

Gorby's mouth was open in a silent scream, one hand
on his knee, the other at his face. His left knee was
ruined. His nose was crushed and torn. Two quick
blows. He had barely sensed another presence in the
room when they came. Now he
looked up through
wet eyes at the smallish man who had done this to him
and the other one who had sliced Walter
Burns’
head
halfway off. Two layers of black stocking covered and
flattened their features, but he knew they had to be
Bannerman's people. He could guess, to his horror,
which two they were.

“This . . . this isn't about you,” he managed. “He's one of ours.”

“My question was why.”

Waldo made a motion to Billy, who nodded, then
allowed
Walter Burns to fall across Gorby. Pinning him.
Soaking him. Then Waldo found the utensil drawer. He
sorted through it until he found a corkscrew, then
leaned over and showed it to Gorby. Satisfied that
Gorby recognized it, he climbed astride Walter Burns
and pressed the utensil into Gorby's ear. Gorby
shrieked, more in terror than in pain.

“One turn,” Waldo said quietly, “for every bad an
swer. One turn when you make me repeat myself.”

“No,” Gorby choked. “No, wait,
I’ll
tell you.” He
wanted to tell them. But a rush of panic seized at his
insides as he realized that the truth would earn him no less than he had intended for Loftus. God damn Whit
low. Whitlow said it was Loftus who did Burdick. Only
Loftus could get inside here. Or tell how to do it. They never would have come back to this house if they had any doubt it was Loftus. The drugs, he thought desper
ately. Maybe they would understand about the drugs.
“Loftus
…” H
e tried to point, feebly, “Loftus went
free-lance. He was dealing cocaine with this cop . . .
Lesko.”

Waldo looked at Loftus, asking by way of a shrug if he
could hear, and with a nod if it were true. Loftus tried to
speak but could not. With effort, he shook his head.
Waldo turned the corkscrew. Another soundless
scream.

“Try again,” Waldo rasped.

Gorby's voice, when he could speak, sounded like
escaping steam. “It's what they told me . . . them and
a woman named Elena . . . maybe Bannerman, too.
Don't hurt me for what they told me.”

Billy turned to Loftus and knelt close to him. “Can
you talk at all?” he asked.

Loftus made a sick, wet sound. He shook his head
again.

“If we get you fixed up, can you straighten this out?”

Loftus nodded. Billy gestured toward Gorby. “Do
we need this guy?”

Loftus hesitated. Another shake of his head, he was sure now, would mean that Gorby would die. A part of him almost wished that he could argue for sparing him. But in his mind he had seen Katherine looking down at
his body as Gorby and Burns had left it. He had seen
Palmer Reid showing snapshots of it.
Along with his
fucking boat. He had seen Palmer Reid with his chil
dren.

Loftus shook his head.

Then he closed his eyes.

CHAPTER 20

Monday morning. Chevy Chase, Maryland.

As Palmer Reid's limousine paused at the electric gates leading to his sprawling Tudor house, he glared
over the driver's shoulder toward the windows of his
study. He'd ordered Whitlow to wait for him there.

Reid was seething. He had just endured an entire
Sunday at Fort Meade, well into the night, attending an
unimaginably soporific seminar on advances in cryptog
raphy, filling a notebook with phrases that meant less to
him than doodles—“Digital Applications of Junction
Technology,” “Analog Optical Computing,” and, most
arcane of all, “Magnetic Bubble Memory”—for the sole
and specific purpose of remaining plausibly isolated
from the weekend's events in New York's Westchester
County.

“Leave everything to me, sir,” Whitlow had said.

Leave everything to me, sir, indeed.

That morning, he had no sooner opened his copy of
The Washington Post
over breakfast when a sealed note
had arrived from Whitlow, urging him to call home at
once. He did, Whitlow answered, and then Whitlow
played for him two messages that had accumulated on
his answering machine. There on the machine, for any
one, including household staff, to hear, was a message
from one Glenn Cook promising that he would shoot the eyes out of any other Palmer Reid agent who ap
peared within a block of the Raymond Lesko residence.
Then, not two hours later, a message
from that pup,
Roger Clew, saying, “You're not awfully good at re
turning calls, Palmer, so I'll tell you what this one's
about. It's to ask what you know about the murder of
Buzz Donovan last Friday in New York. It's also to tell
you that if anything should happen to a man named
Lesko or to any citizen currently living in Westport,
Connecticut, I'm going to be all over you like a fucking
rug.”

Reid slammed the phone down and called for his car.
It took all of the thirty-minute ride to Chevy Chase for
his blood pressure to reach an acceptable level.

Roger Clew, he fumed. The gall of the man. Paul
Bannerman's lackey. Now his protector. Imagine such a
man rising to a position of responsibility in the State Department. Imagine him practically accusing
Palmer Reid
of complicity in a murder. Imagine him referring
to Bannerman and his crowd as citizens.

Whitlow, his expression more pinched than usual,
opened Reid's front door as the car pulled up. Reid
strode past him without a word and walked directly to his study, where he replayed both messages, his color
again rising.

“This Cook,” he said, pressing the
erase
button,
“He's the marksman, isn't he? One of Bannerman's kill
ers?”

“Yes, sir.” Whitlow told him about the sniper episode
on Lesko's street. Whitlow had, in fact, he informed Reid, made contingency plans for Lesko's removal should Lesko become troublesome, but they had not
been acted upon. “The point is that Bannerman is pro
tecting Lesko, which can only mean that you've been
right, sir. They've been in league all along.”

“And now they've somehow enlisted Loftus,” Reid stared.

“It would seem so, sir.” There was that call from
Lesko to Loftus's wife. There was Loftus showing inap
propriate concern about the Donovan matter. There
was Loftus a bit too anxious to provide Lesko with an
alibi for the murder of Thomas Burdick. “Sir,” Whitlow
grasped his knees, “I'm afraid we've had some addi
tional losses.”

Reid closed his eyes. “Report, Charles,” he said
stiffly.

Whitlow told him of a call that had come while Reid
was en route from Fort Meade. The bodies of Gorby and
Burns were discovered that morning in the kitchen of
the Pollard house. Moreover, both Loftus and his young
assistant appeared to have vanished. The physical evi
dence at the scene—specifically, broken teeth and spat
tered blood that did not seem to be either Burns's or
Gorby's—suggested that they may have disposed of Lof
tus and perhaps Poole as well before being killed in
retaliation. That, however, was by no means certain.

Reid's eyes remained closed. “By Bannerman's peo
ple?” he asked.

“It would seem so, sir.”

“Charles
…
?'
'It
was
a
wonder,
thought
Reid,
that
he had any stomach lining left at a
ll.

“Yes, sir.”

“Leave everything to you, Charles. Is that what you
said?”

“Sir, I could hardly have anticipated. . . .”

Reid raised a hand, waved it, then used it to cover his
brow. Three of his men dead, he thought. Two more men, dead if he's lucky, captured or gone over to the
enemy if he is not. A lunatic with a rifle threatening him
on his home telephone. A State Department undersec
retary doing the same. That old fool Donovan, avenged
three times over, perhaps by Bannerman's people, per
haps by this Raymond Lesko who is, by all accounts,
only s
lightly
less of a berserker than Billy McHugh.
Bannerman off to Switzerland, not a care in the world,
very possibly to have a nice long chat with Elena.

“Charles
…
” he lowered his hand, “do you sense
that we might have lost some initiative during your
brief stewardship?”

“No, sir,” Whitlow's chin came up. “Not entirely.”

“Reassure me, Charles.”

“You asked me to arrange a distraction for Banner
man. I have done so. It is a diversionary attack through a
third party. If all goes well, we'll have Bannerman's
people, Elena's people and Raymond Lesko all killing
each other within three days.”

“An attack upon whom, Charles?”

Whitlow hesitated. He had taken pains to place at
least two layers of insulation between Reid and the
event. “Are you certain you want to know, sir?”