The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series) (27 page)

“If he does not . . .”

“He will. I know the man.” Urs Brugg flipped to a fresh page of his tablet. “Now,” he asked firmly, “where, precisely, is this house?”

Bannerman had called Susan from the clinic. He was leaving now, he told her. He would be home in ten minutes.

He'd seen her face throughout the day, or imagined it. He'd seen her as he drove to his office where he returned the calls her father had left on his machine. Messages that he'd erased as she showered. He'd felt her presence as he consuited with Anton, and, soon thereafter, as he enlisted the help of Glenn Cook, his silent marksman, of Molly Farrell, his bomber, and of John Waldo, his machine gunner, then gave them their instructions.

He saw her again, in the evening, in the darkness of Wesley Covington's delivery truck. He saw her body. Dead. Those flawless legs. Long and strong. Blown off at the thighs. Her chest crushed. Recognized her only by her hair and by the rings on her fingers because her face was shredded and torn by flying glass and jagged bits of sheet metal from one of forty exploding cars. It was that vision of her that told him what he would do to this man known as the Arab. And to all those like him.

But tonight . . .

Tonight there was the fire, the wine, and the music. Dinner on the floor. He would try to tell her all the things that he'd never quite learned how to say to a woman. Perhaps had never felt. How the mere touch of her hand meant more to him than all the joys of his life put together. More than all the birthdays and Christmas mornings and victories and cheers. But he would go slowly. Take Molly's advice. Not push it. Although he wished that Molly would stop treating him like a teenager on his first date. He wasn't so dumb about women. Or about their needs. What Susan wants is what any woman wants. Someone to care about, to share herself with, a home, feeling safe . . . loved. Interests of her own. Children, a career, maybe both. He could add, he supposed, not being lied to. But . . .

. . . one day at a time.

He knocked on his door. Three short raps, then two. He reached for his keys. He wished he'd thought to bring flowers.

Around him, ignoring him, were two men and a woman dressed and masked in surgical greens. Outside, in the corridor, Lesko watched through a round glass plate in the operating room door. One hand had formed a fist. He smashed it, rhythmically, into the palm of the other. He had stood this about as long as he was going to.

The surgeon returned to his work. With a swab dipped in iodine, he painted lines on Hector Manley's face where the incisions were to be made. Under the chin, behind the ears, two inches beyond the hairline. He stepped aside. The female nurse, holding a camera, took photographs from several angles. Manley looked beseechingly into the eyes of the nurse. She gave no response. She took more pictures. Manley looked at the surgeon, blinking, then turned his head from him. There was something there, Lesko couldn't see what, that frightened him as much as the instruments, that horrified him as much as the chilling detachment with which they went about their preparations.

“Enough of this shit,” muttered Lesko. He raised a hand to the door.

“Mr. Lesko. Please.”

The voice came from his right. He turned. Anton Zivic, blue business suit, immaculately groomed, had been watching him.

Lesko's hand remained on the door. “I'm not going to let you do this,” he said.

“Do what, Mr. Lesko?” The former GRU colonel approached him. He peered through the glass.

“Carve the guy's face off.” With his right hand, Lesko pulled back his coat to show the police special at his hip. “That doctor picks up that scalpel, I'm taking the Jamaican back to New York. You want answers, I'll get them my way.”

Zivic made a face. “Relax Mr. Lesko. And please keep your voice down.”

“Relax, my ass.” He moved forward. Zivic raised a hand.

“It's theater, Mr. Lesko. Mr. Manley has not yet been harmed. If you do not interfere, there will probably be no need.”

“Theater,” Lesko repeated blankly.

Zivic smiled. Sympathetically. He gestured toward the masked and gowned figure with the iodine swab. “That man is no surgeon. I should think you would have recognized him by now.”

Lesko looked again. The man had rounded the table to the side where the instruments were laid out. Manley's eyes, wide and blinking, followed him. Lesko got his first good look. It was Loftus. Behind the mask, a plastic bridge crisscrossed with tape covered his broken nose. His cheekbone, also fractured, bulged to one side. One eye was still discolored. A rod from the device that wired his teeth had poked a hole through the mask. Now Lesko understood why the sight of him had so terrified the Jamaican. Better to look up and see Dracula standing over you.

“He was here anyway,” Zivic explained. “Convalescing. He complained of having little to do. I asked him if he'd like to try his hand at playing the part of a maniac.”

Lesko shook his head slowly. If Loftus had fooled him, he could only imagine what was passing through the mind of Hector Manley. Still, he was not sure about this at all.

“All that talk in the truck coming up here, that was all bluff?”

“Essentially. Yes.”

“When you say
essentially,
what's left over?”

The smile faded. “It was a bluff, Mr. Lesko,” he said, “but only if it isn't called. One way or the other, that man is going to tell us what we need to know.”

Lesko twisted his lip. “And if he doesn't?”

“He will.”

“So you were serious. You'd do what Bannerman said. With his face.”

“Mr. Lesko . . .”

“Someplace,” Zivic nodded.

“Have you examined the body, Mr. Lesko?”

”I saw all I—”

“You killed him. Not Paul. Tell your daughter that.”

Lesko stared. “Bullshit.”

Lesko reddened. “Even if I believed that—which I don't—”

“Please go home, Mr. Lesko. You are becoming tiresome.”

”—from what I could hear,” Lesko continued, “once the guy started talking, Bannerman couldn't shut him up.”

“Take the truck if you wish. Although Mr. Covington would like it back in the morning. There will be a package in it. Please treat it carefully.”

“So what's the point?” Lesko pressed. “If the guy wants to talk, let him talk. Or do you drag it out because you like it?”

“In a few minutes,” Zivic said patiently, ”I will open that door. I will tell Mr. Loftus that he is needed elsewhere to treat a gunshot wound. Mr. Manley will be left alone for a few hours, strapped to that table, to consider his future. When I decide he's ready, he and I will have a talk. If it is satisfactory, it is possible that he will, in fact, have some sort of future.”

Lesko straightened. ”I think I'll stick around.”

“To what purpose?”

“To make sure you—” He stopped himself. “To hear what he says.”

“Then understand me, Mr. Lesko. That man in there knows the uses of terror as well as we do. He was trained in it, in Cuba. I will want to know what he has learned and how he is expected to apply it. But above all, if he is to survive his visit with us, which is possible although not likely, he will tell me everything he knows, or thinks, or can intelligently guess about this plan to bring car bombs to Westport. Have you ever seen the effect of such a bomb, Mr. Lesko?”

He didn't answer.

”I have,” Zivic told him. “So has Paul. Twice in Beirut. Once in Rome. The least destructive of these killed fourteen people and maimed three times that number. If one bomb does that, Mr. Lesko, what might forty do?”

Still no answer. But he could see it. He remembered the Marine barracks in Lebanon. More than 200 dead. A whole building down on top of them. He knew what one bomb could do. Let alone forty. To a town that Susan, damn her anyway, doesn't have the sense to stay out of.

Something was wrong. There was Susan. She was by the fire, kneeling, pouring wine into two glasses. The music was playing. She'd chosen Vivaldi.
The Four Seasons.
Candles were burning on the mantelpiece. She wore a blouse, it looked like silk, white, billowing sleeves, the top three buttons open. He could see that she wore nothing underneath.

Bannerman draped his coat across a chair. He paused to study her, admire her, letting it settle on him that she was really there, that she'd stayed, and that, in the light of the fire she was so thoroughly, heartbreakingly lovely that her presence seemed a dream. He crossed to her, kissed her lightly on upturned lips, lingered a moment, touched her hair, then lowered himself to the thickly piled carpet facing her. She handed him a glass. “Cheers,” she said and sipped. She lowered her eyes.

“You know what?” she asked.

“You're very beautiful,” he said. “What?”