The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (32 page)

“I have no idea, sir.” Loftus gave up.

“Mr. Donovan is involved, of course. Though possi
bly as a dupe. Yes. Lesko duped Donovan into using his
Washington contacts to determine how much we know.
You see, Robert? You sniffed them out last night. You
made them break from cover. Donovan calls the Justice
Department, I call Donovan, Donovan promptly meets
with Lesko, then Lesko promptly rushes off to another
meeting, calling attention to himself by going straight
to a luxury hotel we know he can scarcely afford. Rather
clumsy, that. His meeting, quite possibly, is with Bannerman himself.”

“We'll see, sir. We'll watch the hotel.”

“For heaven's sake.”

“Sir?”

“Or,” Palmer Reid continued, his voice stronger, as
if struck by a revelation, “Bannerman has not yet met
Elena but intends to do so in Switzerland. Why else
would he go there?”

“Possibly to ski, sir,” Loftus said and wished he
hadn't.

“Robert,” Reid said sharply, “how many coinci
dences must pile upon coincidences before you begin to
suspect a pattern? Has Bannerman ever gone off on a
holiday before within five days of returning from an
other? Has he ever before been known to travel with a
woman?”

“Offhand, I don't think so. However, Mr. Reid. . . .*'

“But the details are really neither here nor there*
Robert. It's Bannerman's ultimate intention that mat
ters. And the worst-case scenario assumes that Ban
nerman's intention is to bring down everything I've spent my lifetime building. He could bring down this
n
ation's entire intelligence system, Robert. Do you real
ize that? He could bring down the President.”

“Sir, I really think we should sleep on that one.”

“Of course, Robert. You and I both.”

“Sir, why don't I hop the shuttle and come down there so we can thrash this out?”

“Have you been to Westport yet?”

“Westport?”

“You remember, Robert. It's a town up in Connecti
cut. You told me on Monday that you'd have a look
around yourself.”

“Sir, I was referring to the activities of Lesko and his
daughter. I can't go to Westport. Bannerman knows
me.”

“Who's the man with you now?”

“Doug Poole, sir.”  .

“Send him, then. You go to the Beckwith Regency to
see with whom, if not Bannerman, Lesko is meeting. If
Bannerman is in Westport, or after he returns to
Westport, tell Poole I want an hour-by-hour log of his
activities.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In the meantime, you will check with the airlines
and confirm Bannerman's destination.”

“Yes, sir.”

“For heaven's sake.”

“Sir?”

“You know, I've just had an idea.”

“What would that be, sir?”

“All the momentum thus far has been Bannerman's.
Perhaps it's time we gave him something else to think about.”

“I'm not sure I follow, sir. What's your idea?”

“It's something else I'm going to sleep on, Robert. In
the meantime, when Burdick reports in, tell him I want
to see him right away and put him on that shuttle.”

“No, sir.”

“What was that, Robert?”

“I'm not going to do that. You don't want Burdick yet, sir. Please.”

A long silence. “Robert . . . ?”

“Yes sir?”

“Nothing. That will be all, Robert.”

Charles Whitlow, Palmer Reid's personal assistant,
waited until Reid broke the connection before replac
ing the receiver on his extension phone. He folded his
hands across his lap, drew his knees together, and
waited.

“Comments?” Reid asked.

“As you've noted in the past, sir, Loftus does shrink from difficult decisions on occasion.”

“Recommendations?”

“Presume the worst case. Act decisively. One de
stroys a chain by destroying a link.”

“My thought exactly.”

“In fairness to Loftus, sir, he may have a point in not
using Burdick. Not much finesse there, sir.”

“You have something better in mind, I take it.”

“Shall I outline, sir?”

“No, Charles. Execute.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Decisively, Charles.”

“Of course, sir.”

CHAPTER 11

Doug Poole was elated. Here he was, Doug Poole, actu
ally in Westport. During his five years in Army Intelli
gence, and especially in the two years since Loftus
recruited him to Reid's unit, hardly a week had gone by
without his hearing some wild story about the
Westporters.

He knew the old man hated them. But he sure
didn't. He thought they were fantastic. They were ev
erything he used to hope his own job would be.

Just being here. On the Post Road. Not fifty yards
from the travel agency where Paul Bannerman, Mama's
Boy in the flesh,
was probably sitting right now. With
luck he'd get a look at him. Or Billy McHugh. Carla
Benedict. John Waldo. Any of them. These people were
legends.

He'd lucked out on this one. Loftus had made it clear
that he didn't want him going to Westport. It was the
old man who had insisted. Just watch, Loftus told him.
Keep your car doors locked, with you inside. Pick a spot
where you. can watch Bannerman's office, take a few
pictures of who comes and goes, don't let anyone see
your camera. Don't get out of the car at all. If you have
to take a leak, either do it in a cup or drive over the line
into Norwalk. If you do spot any of Bannerman's
p
eople,
for Christ's sake try to resist asking for their autographs.

Loftus. He could be a prick when he wanted to be.
He could be patronizing. But Poole knew he wasn't the
only one who'd give up a month's leave just for the
chance to watch some of these people in action. They
were the all-stars. They weren't company people. They
were all contract agents. Which was a lot more interest
ing because between them they had probably worked
for every Western intelligence agency at one time or
another without ever having to do any of the bullshit
work.

Bannerman himself had worked for the CIA and for Army Intelligence, which gave Doug Poole a feeling of
special kinship with him, and he'd either worked for the
National Security Agency or had advanced infiltration
and weapons training with them at Fort Meade. Billy
McHugh and Carla Benedict had worked for
...
you
name it. The Israeli Mossad, MI-6, and both the French
and German counterterrorist units. And Anton Zivic
was a full colonel in Soviet Military Intelligence, the
GRU. Zivic. There was another one they'd like to get into Fort Meade. Except Zivic would probably never
see it from the outside again. Yeah. Fort Meade. That
place was the nuts.

Poole, like Paul Bannerman, had trained there. Just
in surveillance techniques, though, along with a few
other agents and a lot of cops from across the country.
But the facility was mind-boggling. Talk about towns
being taken over. Fort Meade was a small city, about
fifty thousand people living and working there, all self-
contained inside three barbed-wire fences. The middle
one was electrified. And the barbed wire on top of the
other two slanted inward as if to keep people from get
ting out. No place on earth was more secret, more se
cure, except maybe the Kremlin. It even had its own TV
station and power supply.

Everybody talks about the CIA, Doug Poole
thought, but the National Security Agency must have
ten times the staff and twenty times the budget. Their
main job had to do with spy satellites, long-range elec
tronic surveillance from ships and planes, code-break
ing and the like. But almost anything could be going on
at Fort Meade. In some ways they had it made. No one
looking over their shoulders. No one making movies
about them. No congressional hearings, no spy novels.
Even Robert Ludlum didn't give a shit about the NSA because he thinks there's no glamour there—and they
hardly ever shoot people or get laid.

Doug Poole smiled.

You know what's funny? Robert Ludlum even lives 
here someplace.
Right here in Westport All this shit
going on all around him. Chances are he's even had a
pop or two at Mario's.

Hey wait . . . !

That little guy just getting ready to come out. You know who that looks like?

Doug Poole raised his camera and peered through
the telephoto lens. That's him, he thought. Anton Zivic. Bad angle for a shot. Too much reflection on the wind
shield. He picked up his notepad and scribbled in the
entry. Thursday, 4:27 P.M., Anton Zivic exiting Luxury
Travel Associates. Must have been there since Poole
arrived at 3:10.

Have to get a better angle. Can't leave car. Move it.
Up to the other end by Herman's Sporting Goods.

Damn.

Poole glanced into his rearview mirror. Some guy
was double-parked, blocking him. Poole tapped his
horn. Come on. Move. The guy made a wait-a-minute
gesture and pointed up ahead to show he was waiting
for a space. Hey, schmuck. This is a space too, if you'll
back up and let me out. Poole lowered his window.

“Come on, will you? Back up.”

“What?”

“I said back up.”

“Five seconds.”

Zivic was out the door. Shit! Poole snatched up his
camera and stepped out of his car, one leg, his eyes on
Bannerman's storefront. He stopped. The hell with this.
Loftus
would see the picture and know it wasn't taken
from inside the car and he'd have his ass. That was Doug
Poole's second-from-last thought.

The last, as he felt his car door slam against his leg
and then something else crunch hard into the side of his
neck, was that the crazy fuck behind him must have thought he was getting out to start a fight over a god
damned parking space. The guy was hitting him. Push
ing him back inside. And now, through a white sparkly
haze, Poole could see his face. It couldn't be a fight. The
face didn't even look mad. No expression at all. And
now the guy . . . short guy . . . white hair . . . was
helping him sit up straight . . . straightening his head . . . arms on both sides of his neck.

That was all Doug Poole remembered. Except that
the man was friendly now. Talking to him. Gesturing
with his hands. But that part must have been a dream.

John Waldo kept up an animated chat with the un
conscious young man long enough for any passerby who
thought he'd seen an act of violence to conclude that he
must have been mistaken. Just two men talking. The young one must have slipped. Still some ice on the
ground.

That settled, Waldo returned to his own car, parked
it, then walked back to Doug
P
oole's car and slipped
behind the wheel. At the Herman's curb cut, he sig
naled Anton Zivic with his horn, gestured in the general
direction of Gary Russo's home and office, then flipped
his turn signal.

Anton Zivic had agreed without hesitation to assume
Paul's duties during the coming three weeks. He had
just spent two hours being briefed on various matters that might require his attention during that period, in
cluding a review of the instructions each of the others
had in the event of several classifications of emergency.
Paul expected no trouble, he said, although Palmer
Reid almost certainly knew something of his plans by
now and, knowing Reid, just might be emboldened to
try an exploratory probe. But it would be only that, Paul
felt sure, and if it happened Anton should take care that
no one else unnecessarily escalated it into something
more.

As for the question, which Paul raised last, of Anton
taking over all administrative duties for the next full
year, Anton agreed that it was a burden which, in fair
ness, ought to be shared. He certainly had the experi
ence, having commanded a staff of
thirty and run ten
times that number of field agents in his former life. But,
selfishly perhaps, the simpler and more gracious nature
of his present life had far greater appeal. There
was also
the question of whether he could ever hope to inspire
the sort of loyalty that Paul enjoyed with these people.
His people. Nearly all of whom were essentially un
governable, and yet they chose to be governed by Paul.
Some who feared nothing on earth chose to fear Paul. Or chose to love him. It was astonishing, when one
thought of it. For most of them, a word such as love had
scarcely entered their lives. Paul did not fear them and
they knew it. He admired them and they knew it. He
loved them and they knew it because they saw it in his
eyes and his actions and they also heard it in his words.
Could the answer be as simple as that? Even with men
and women such as these?

On the matter of being the first to rotate into Paul's
position, Zivic knew as he departed Paul's office that the
answer would ultimately be yes. Fair was fair. And a
year was only a year. Also, as he left Paul's office, he saw
that his new responsibilities had already begun. Be
cause there was John Waldo driving off in a car that was not his own, with a passenger who should not have been
there. A young man
,
l
arge, blond hair, apparently
asleep. John pointing to Dr. Russo's residence. Zivic climbed into his car and followed. “It's all yours
,
An
ton,” Paul said to him, offering his hand. “And thank
you.”