The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (30 page)

“Did you ask about him or not?”

Donovan nodded. “The name did not seem familiar
to him. He put me on hold. When he came back he
asked me what this Bannerman fellow had to do with
the other. I said, ‘What have you got, and why do you have a file on him at all?’ He answered that there's no
file as such. The only place Bannerman's name turns up
is on a list of what Intelligence people like to call ‘assets.’
In Bannerman's case, he's an asset because he's particu
larly well-traveled and well-connected. People like
Bannerman are useful in making introductions and get
ting American diplomatic personnel and business exec
utives invited to the right parties. There are many thou
sands of people on such lists, Ray, and most don't know
it. Most are never asked to do anything.”

“So you think Bannerman is straight,” Lesko said
doubtfully.

“Again, no reason to think otherwise.”

“Then why did his name shake the other guy up?”

“Perhaps because I'd told him the two were unre
lated. Then, lo and behold, they both led ultimately to
Palmer Reid's office, though by’ different routes.”

“It doesn't bother you that Bannerman's on that
list?”

“Palmer Reid pointed out that I'm on it myself.”

,Donovan watched Lesko as he said that. His friend's eyes, which had been shining dangerously since his first
mention of Paul Bannerman, had relaxed into their nor
mal glower. Donovan was satisfied that, whatever
might be going on here, Lesko truly did not know about it and that Lesko, therefore, had not been using him. He
gestured toward the buffet table.

“
Let's get some lunch, Ray. You've probably had us both worrying over noth
ing.”

B
uzz Donovan hailed a taxi on Vanderbilt and
dropped Lesko off at the Beckwith Regency before con
tinuing on to his own apartment on East 57th Street.

He hoped he'd handled the meeting well, though he
feared that he might have told Lesko more than was
good for him. Ray Lesko was not a man to agitate, cer
tainly not where his daughter was concerned.

Quite possibly he had said too much. But he'd felt
sure going in that Lesko knew more than he was letting
on and Lesko
ha
d hoped to draw an admission out of him.
In the past, whenever Lesko seemed to be even periph
erally involved in a thing, he usually turned out to be
right at its center. That did not appear to be the case
here. Lesko seemed quite genuinely in the dark.

He didn't like lying to Ray. But it was a very small lie.
One of omission. He'd told Ray that his friend had mut
tered “Jesus Christ” at the mention of Paul Bannerman —he probably shouldn't have said even that—but he didn't mention the almost palpable fear that came back
through the phone line. Donovan was sure without
question that his mention of Paul Bannerman had
prompted his friend's call to Palmer Reid and Reid's call
back to him. And yet Palmer Reid had behaved as if he
were hearing the name for the first time.

But then, Palmer Reid is a liar. Always had been.
Probably pathological. George Bernard Shaw once
wrote that the penalty of being a liar is not that one
can't be believed, but that one can't believe anyone
else. That neatly described the cynical and suspicious nature of Palmer Reid. But it didn't begin to describe
Reid's capacity for criminal mischief while cloaking
himself in the flag of the United States of America. And
if this Paul Bannerman is involved with Palmer Reid he
is almost surely cut from the same cloth and Susan
Lesko has found herself in very bad company indeed.

Well, Buzz Donovan decided, we'll just have to do
something about that, won't we. We'll see what this
Bannerman fellow is all about. Two or three more phone calls ought to do it.

Lesko entered the lobby of the Beckwith Regency
on Park Avenue at 54th and approached the desk. A
new clerk was on duty. She didn't know Lesko and was
visibly startled to see such a rough, scowling face, and
the body of an aging wrestler, neither of which fit the Regency's customer profile as described to her during
employee indoctrination. He gave his name and told
her she was holding an
envelope for him with a room key. She found it, he took it, then he proceeded to the
elevator, his scowl deepening.

Lesko didn't like that talk with Donovan at all. Not
that any of it necessarily meant anything except that
Buzz had read too many spy novels and had too much
time on his hands. None of it connected. Take it all piece by piece and all of it could be explained away.

So Robert Loftus works for Palmer Reid. Who gives a
shit? So the former FBI guy is now probably CIA and
has some new secret job. Who gives a shit about that
either?
Anyway, almost everything's a secret with those
assholes. Even the time of day is on a need-to
-
know
basis. The real reason everything's a secret is that hardly
anything they plan ever works the way they meant it to
and hardly anything they ever find out ever matters a
good goddamn in the long run and if they didn't keep it
all secret everybody else would know that too. Anyway,
Lesko couldn't care less.

Except Donovan had lied to him.

He wasn't sure what the lie was, exactly. But he'd
watched Buzz's eyes. There was something sitting back
there. Then there was all that business about not want
ing to talk on the phone. What couldn't he have said?
Whatever it was, Lesko was fairly sure that whatever
Donovan didn't want to say on the phone, he didn't say
back at the Yale Club, either.

Wait a second. Hold it, Lesko thought. I'm getting like the fucking CIA. A conspiracy mentality. Those
guys don't even take anything at face value. Let out a
fart in public and they'll think it's a secret code. You
know what's doing this? It's those fucking four o'clock-
in-the-mornings, that's what's doing it. Last night
Elena's name comes up for the first time in two years,
from the guy Loftus
,
who is supposed to be a pro
but is very easily spotted
,
and
who brings up
Elena's name a little too easily
,
and these things
bother me more than I admit
...
so my subconscious
decides to aggravate me about them at four in the
morning. So I get this stupid dream with Susan in it, and
Katz in it being a jerk, and Paul Bannerman in it except
he looks like me, and Elena standing outside looking
like she wants to kiss and make up, and Buzz is watching
all this, scribbling in his notebook. I should make sense out of that? I should think the dream was a premonition
just because Buzz calls me the next morning and asks
what's going on? He asked it last night, too, for Christ's
sake. The dream didn't mean shit.

Except he was still aggravated. And except Donovan lied.

What if the lie was about Susan's boyfriend? What if
Paul Bannerman is more than just a name on a list of
potential assets and is somehow involved with Loftus
and Reid? And Elena. And therefore maybe even Katz.
That would connect everything, wouldn't it?

Uh-oh.

No.

Lesko didn't even want to think about that. What he wanted was to get up to his room, get some coffee sent
up, and then go through this envelope full of security
reports so he could start his tour. He wanted to do that before the urge got too great to go up to Westport and look up this Paul Bannerman and bang him against a
wall until he told Lesko what the hell was going on here.

At the bank of pay phones just inside the Pan Am
building off Vanderbilt Avenue, Robert Loftus sat read
ing a folded copy of
The New York Times.
He did not
look up as a second man, younger but similarly dressed
in a dark business suit, approached him and whispered
several words. The other man walked on and took a
position some distance away. Loftus lowered his paper
and stared thoughtfully at one of the phones. With a
sigh, he stood up and limped toward it, favoring a pain
ful left knee. He closed the booth and, after another
long moment of hesitation, tapped out the area code for
Virginia and then a number. A voice said “Yes?” Loftus
said his name and asked for extension 004. Another
voice said “Yes?” The voice of Palmer Reid.  

“Donovan met Lesko, sir. They had lunch at the Yale
Club.”

“Any idea what was said between them?”

“No, sir. Except that his call to Lesko followed within
minutes of his conversation with you. Judging by his
tone and his wish to see Lesko immediately and pri
vately, I don't think you threw him entirely off the
scent, sir.”

“Where is Donovan now?”

“Apparently headed back to his apartment. Your
man Burdick is on him. My man, Poole
,just rejoined me
after Donovan dropped off Lesko.”

“They are both
my men,
Robert.”