The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series) (12 page)

Anyway, who'd give a shit?

Tell Bannerman you can prove that Reid was extorting drug money and you'd get, at the most, a yawn. But try telling a paranoid son of a bitch like Reid that nobody cares, that everyone just wants to be left alone, that Bannerman has probably never even heard of Elena before now, and you'll get that patronizing little smile of his that says why don't you ran along and leave these matters to the professionals.

He should have known. If he'd programmed the computer properly, he would have. But how do you program meanness? Vindictiveness? There had to be a way. He'd work on it.

A more immediate question, he reminded himself, was what to tell Bannerman. That he knows it was Reid? That he saw this coming? No way. Bannerman would ask how he knew. “How, Roger, could you know what Reid knows unless you told him? Is that what you did, Roger? Did you put a bug in his ear? Did you, for example, make a careless phone call over an unsecured line, maybe to Irwin Kaplan's home phone, knowing that Reid almost certainly had a wire on it? Did you ask him a few harmless questions about Lesko, and Elena, and Zurich? Did you remark on the odd coincidence that Lesko's daughter and I just happened to be on our way to Switzerland? Is that why this happened, Roger? Did you set me up?”

No. I mean, I never intended
. . .

Christ!

Get a grip, Clew told himself. Bannerman won't ask those questions. No way he could know about that phone call. And even if he did, no way he could conclude that the leak was deliberate. That his friend of more than fifteen years was playing computer games with his life. And he would certainly be in no mood to listen to computer theory, especially if the girl comes out of this with her brain fried.

No. First things first. What was needed now was damage control. What he had to do, one way or the other, was head off a war. At least until he was ready. Until it was his war, fought his way.

“Excuse me?”

“Yes?” he asked.

The man held up a cigarette and gestured toward the front of the business-class section. ”I couldn't get a seat in smoking. It looks like you've got two. Mind if I grab a quick one?”

Tm afraid I do mind,” he answered. ”I paid for both of them so I'd have room to work.”

The man's eyes dropped meaningfully to the vacant seat. No papers, no briefcase. Just the uneaten lunch. ”I won't stay but five minutes. One cigarette?” he pleaded.

Clew hesitated. Then he nodded. “Sure,” he said. “One cigarette.”

In five minutes, the man was gone. Clew was grateful that he'd made no attempt at conversation. No “What brings you to Zurich?” No “Nice machine you have there.” No questions that would have made Clew wonder about him more than he did already.

It was so damned exhausting.

“Mister Bannerman? Wait, please!”

“Thank you,” he said, and began to pocket the slip.

“No.” She stopped him. “You must call.”

He unfolded the piece of paper. A name and a Zurich number. Urs Brugg. A relative, he assumed, of the woman, Elena. Probably news about Gary Russo's condition. Bannerman looked up at Helge and again he noticed her eyes. He saw more than concern. She was staring at the message slip as if afraid of it.

“What has happened?” he asked quietly.

“Please.” She gestured toward her cubicle. “You must come..”

At Helge's desk, as the young Swiss waited in the corridor with Billy, Bannerman listened, his face drained of color, as Urs Brugg described the ambush that had left Gary Russo and Josef Brugg dead and his niece, Elena, dangerously wounded.

The voice on the telephone was softly accented, a deep and gentle bass. It sounded somehow familiar.

“My niece,” Urs Brugg told him, “would not accept sedation until I promised I would speak to you. She is alive because she was shielded by the body of the injured man, Russo. She asks me to persuade you that such use of him was inadvertent.”

”I . . . understand,” he answered, stunned. He had watched them leave. Russo in the left rear, held in the woman's arms.

“It is Elena's impression, however, that your man was unimportant to them. Both gunmen, after first shooting Josef, concentrated their fire on her. My nephew Willem drove them off before they could finish her.”

Bannerman's brain was whirling. He groped for a chair and pulled it under him. Beyond the shock of Russo's death and learning that a second team, a back-up team of killers had been near, he found himself trying to envision this man, Urs Brugg, who could speak of ambush and murder with such self-possession. But more than that, he wondered why. Why first Susan and now Elena, two women whose only common thread tied them to Raymond Lesko?

That voice. “Mr. Brugg,” he asked, “do I know you, sir?”

“We have not met.”

“Did you call this hospital yesterday? To advise the doctor who was treating Susan Lesko?”

“Yes. Also at the request of my niece.”

“How did you know to look for a suppository?’*

“Elena has seen this method before.”

“When she trafficked in cocaine?”

He heard a cluck of the tongue. An expression of distaste. “There are more generous ways to characterize what she did,” Urs Bragg told him. ”I emphasize
did.
Nonetheless, you are correct.”

“I'm sorry. I have to know this.”

“Yes.” A long pause. “Elena asked that I hold nothing back. It is difficult.”

“Tell me about Palmer Reid, then. How is he involved?”

Evidence. Bannerman closed his eyes. There is never any evidence. Intuition is everything. “Please tell me.”

Bannerman had little interest in her personal history and less in the justification of Bolivia's drag crop. But Urs Bragg needed to say aloud how he had come to terms with the life his niece had lived; Bannerman did not press him.

Reid threatened her. Elena, by then safely in Zurich, told him to do his worst. Reid also accused her of complicity with Lesko, reasoning that he would not have let her live had there not been an arrangement between them. She denied it. Reid said that Lesko, in any case, would have to die. His loved ones as well. Reid would not prevent it. He could not afford to appear weak in the eyes of the traffickers. Elena swore to Reid that whatever harm came to Lesko or his family would also be visited on the family and the person of Palmer Reid.

“Why?” Bannerman interrupted, startled. “Why would she protect Lesko?”

“It is ... um, perhaps in the nature of a penance. Perhaps a compulsion. Even Elena cannot explain her emotions toward this man.”

“This threat. Reid took it seriously?”

”I added my voice to it.”

”I see,” he said politely.

Urs Brugg heard the doubt. ”I am not without means, Mr. Bannerman.”

“What changed?” he asked. “Why would Reid try to kill Elena now?”

“Because he saw that Elena had somehow recruited Mama's Boy to her cause. And that Mama's Boy was clearly in league with Lesko, even to the extent of using Lesko's daughter as the means of exposing his drug dealing on the pages of a New York newspaper.”

Bannerman was silent for a long moment. “You do realize,” he said slowly, “that none of this is true? That I never set eyes on Lesko or your niece, or even heard her name before today?”

“Of course. But Palmer Reid does not.”

Another long silence. ”I don't believe it.”

“Please tell me why.”

“To begin with, I couldn't care less that Reid is involved in cocaine traffic. If it wasn't Reid, it would be someone else. I have no interest in Reid as long as he doesn't bother me.”

“Would he believe that? The man hates you. Therefore, he fears you.”

Bannerman shook his head. “Which is why he would not dare hurt someone close to me.”

“But if he had succeeded, if Lesko's daughter had died, whom would you have blamed?”

Bannerman didn't answer.

“Drug dealers? Lesko himself? My niece? Have not each of these crossed your mind?”

Bannerman hesitated. “Yes,” he admitted.

“As well?”

Bannerman heard the emphasis on the word
claimed.

“Of Reid's?”