The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (62 page)

some priced at more than she'd pay for a car. And each
of the five ski-clothing shops displayed modish outfits
whose cost would dress her for an entire season.

The people,
however, were different. No one on the
street seemed dressed for show. Most wore ski clothing
that looked well-used and functional. Everyone looked
fit and relaxed, and nearly everyone smiled and nodded
as they passed. If they had money it was quiet money.
Like the town itself, except for a few store windows,
there was no neon about them, nothing that shouted.
What Klosters seemed, more than
anything to Susan, was
safe.
She repeated the word to herself. Perhaps it
was the wall of mountains that made this place seem so
like a womb.

She thought of Paul. He was walking at her side.
Leaving her to her thoughts. She wondered if she would
have thought of Klosters as safe if she had come here
with anyone but him. Or if she'd never known him. Paul
did seem to like safe places. Windermere Island, for
example. Westport, for example. Even his condomin
ium there. Guarded. Hard to reach.

Hold it, she told herself. Now
you
cut it out. Every
one here has a buck or two. And everyone here has
made his own comfortable little world someplace.
Paul's no different. Don't start.

“Beg pardon?” he put an arm across her shoulders.

She looked up at him questioningly.

“You've been talking to yourself.” he said.

“Have I? I have not.”

“My mistake.”

“What did I say?”

“Safe. You said it three times.”

She shrugged. “Doesn't it strike you that way. This
place, I mean?”

“You may not think so when you see some of the
runs”
             
,

“You know what I mean. Down here.”

“I suppose. Now that you mention it.”

Paul looked away. But he had to smile. They'd just
passed a jewelry store window where, a few years back,
two young backpackers, Dutch kids, decided to finance
their travels by pulling a midnight smash-and-grab at
the Rolex display, probably too stoned to remember
that almost every Swiss male was an army reservist and
all of them kept NATO rifles in their hall closets. The
two young men barely got fifty feet from the jewelry
store before they were bracketed by automatic-weap
ons fire from half a dozen different balconies. Paul was
sure they'd never have made it out of Klosters in any
case. This was a valley town, with just one road in or out,
easily sealed at either end. That's why Britain's royal
family came here to ski. Security's easy. No reasonable
hope of escape if you came with bad intentions. It was
also why Carla Benedict moved to nearby Davos a few
years back after some East Germans—whom Billy even
tually discouraged—had put a hundred-thousand-dollar
price on her head.

The station was just ahead, their baggage where
they left it, the two policemen gone. So was the man in
the waiting room. He had not followed them. Paul was
sure of that. Probably just someone who stopped in to
get warm. Speaking of that, he thought, the tempera
ture felt like it was dropping. The air smelled of new snow. He stepped up to a weather station mounted on
the outside wall near the glass doors. Temperature —2
Celsius. Barometer falling sharply, edging down to
where it said
sturm
in Germanic script. He looked at the
sky.

“More snow coming?” Susan saw the thickening
clouds.

He nodded. “Maybe we'd better unpack and get a
couple of runs in while we can. If it snows more than a
foot or so they'll close the trails.”

“Let's do it,” she said. “Can we get help with these
bags?”

Paul hesitated. His intention had been that they'd
carry the luggage themselves, all but the ski bags for
which he'd have to make a second trip. That would give
him a few minutes alone to call Anton for an update.

A better idea, he thought. Don't call. Don't inter
fere. Don't second-guess. You're on vacation.
Don't.
...

“Don't what?” Susan asked.

“Beg pardon?”

“You're talking to yourself.”

“No, I'm not.”

“My mistake.”

He pinched some snow off the top of a parking meter
and flicked it at her.
             
\

“Come on.” She took his arm and steered him to the
luggage. “Let's go skiing.”

Palmer Reid's morning had not improved.

The single bright spot thus far was his own
deniability of any foreknowledge of Whitlow's Byzan
tine plan for the mutual destruction of the Bannerman/Lesko/Elena axis. The agent of the plan would be a particularly repulsive Bolivian named Ortirez. Ortirez
would make all arrangements. Even Whitlow did not
know the specifics. He, Palmer Reid, would be at least
four layers removed from any reasonable suspicion of
involvement in the events Whitlow had set in motion.

Reasonable suspicion. There was the rub. Banner
man, for all his cold-bloodedness, could not be expected
to behave reasonably upon being presented with the
corpse of the Lesko girl. No amount of insulation, be it
four layers or .fifty, would keep him from suspecting that
Palmer Reid, for all his innocence
,
. genuine inno
cence
,
was somehow behind it. He would not look long for proof.

But Whitlow, manipulative little weasel that he is,
had thought of that as well. “What, sir,” he asked,
“would an innocent man do in your position? Would he
not be legitimately concerned that Bannerman might
suspect his hand in it? Would he not, therefore, contact
Bannerman immediately upon hearing of the girl's
death, express that concern, express utter outrage, and
insist, your past differences notwithstanding, upon help
ing him to track down those responsible?”

“Bannerman's not stupid, Charles,” Reid said
thoughtfully. “An innocent man might do that. So
might a guilty one.”

“Yes, but he'll have other things to think about. It
will be quite clear, sir, from the manner of her death that the girl died for her father's sins. Lesko and
Bannerman will blame each other, both will blame
Elena, Elena will blame Ortirez. You, sir, need
only sit
back and enjoy the carnage until, at last, you put
Bannerman firmly in your debt by presenting him with
the body of General Ortirez.”

Or yours, Charles. Or yours.

Within two hours of that conversation, however, the
inner glow Palmer Reid was beginning to feel—Paul
Bannerman's comeuppance finally at hand—was rudely
extinguished by a summons to an immediate confer
ence at the office of Barton Fuller, the second most
powerful man in Washington, and fourth in line for the
presidency of the United States.

“Good morning, Mr. Reid.” The Secretary's execu
tive assistant looked up from her desk but did not smile.
“Mr. Fuller will see you at once.”

Whitlow moved toward the door with him.

“Mr. Fuller asks to see you alone, sir.”

Whitlow hesitated, one eyebrow raised as if in pro
test, his hands balled into little fists at the end of arms
that never seemed to bend or swing even when he
walked quickly. The Secretary's assistant's young son
had electric toys that reminded her of Charles Whitlow.

“I won't be long, Charles.” Reid indicated a seat. Whitlow waited until Reid stepped through the door
before he took it. Once there, he reached into his shirt
pocket and fingered a pack of cigarettes but did not take
one. The assistant knew
that Whitlow never smoked.
She also knew that the cigarette pack almost certainly
contained a recording device and that Whitlow was
switching it off.

Palmer Reid closed the door behind him and waited
for Barton Fuller to rise. He did not. Fuller made a final
note on a paper he was reading and slid it into a file.

“I have very little time,” Reid said coldly.

“Then we'll move right along, Palmer.” Fuller stood
now, revealing his exceptional height. He stepped
around his desk and approached to within a foot of
Palmer Reid's chest. “Palmer,” he asked, looking down
into the smaller man's eyes, “could you be up to any
thing that might, just possibly, cause embarrassment to
the president?”