The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (35 page)

It seemed to be only the beginning. And it was cer
tainly not just the Arabs. The Red Brigades of Italy and
Germany, the Irish Republican Army, the Basque and
the Puerto Rican separatists had formed a loose confed
eracy. One would do the work of the other in return for money or arms. With either of these groups, an interro
gator would look in vain for cogent political objectives
until he realized that the only real objective was self-perpetuation. But neither Paul nor Anton bothered to
look for reasons anymore. They simply destroyed them
as they were found. Neither kept prisoners or
turned
the
m over to legal systems, because a live prisoner inev
itably resulted in a new act of terrorism intended to secure his or her release. They were both tiring of the
futility of it, the impoverishment of reason; Zivic more
quickly than Paul

Colonel Zivic had made up his mind that when the
time came for him to retire, or should he be recalled to
Moscow with even the hint that he might not be reas
signed outside the Eastern Bloc, he would move imme
diately to ensure that his declining years were spent as gracefully and tranquilly as possible. He would disap
pear quietly if he could. He would defect if absolutely necessary. But he would remain in the West and enjoy
its decadence as long as it lasted.

Zivic's recall to Moscow came during his sixth year in
Rome. The order was hand-delivered by two new depu
ties whose primary duty, it was clear, was to watch him closely. He knew this did not necessarily imply a suspi
cion of unreliability. It was purely routine, but only in
cases of permanent recall. He invited the two deputies
to the Ranieri on a night when it was Paul's habit to dine
there. Paul greeted him and Anton responded with un
characteristic correctness and introduced his compan
ions, leaving it to Paul to judge their purpose by their
brusque and wary manner.

“How are your helicopter lessons going?” Anton
asked.

Paul didn't blink. “Quite well,” he said. “Have you
ever ridden one?”

“Never.”

“Would you like to come up with me one day soon?”

“Alas, I'm leaving on a journey tomorrow.”

“Another time then. By the way, Miss Farrell sends
her regards.”

Two hours and several vodkas later, the three
Rus
sians arrived at the taxi stand on the north end of the
Piazza di Spagna. A prostitute astride a Vespa motor
scooter chatted teasingly with the first driver in the line.
He was an older man, Anton Zivic's age, but he was
blushing like a schoolboy.

“Hey, how about you?” she addressed Anton in Ital
ian. “You want to take a ride with me?”

“Some other time perhaps.” He opened the door for
his
two
companions. The second one hesitated, prefer
ring to have Anton sit in between. Anton gave him a
friendly push.

“Last chance.” The prostitute revved her motor and
slid forward on her seat, showing more of her thigh in
the process. “Come, papa. Jump on.”

Zivic slammed the door and did. The Vespa was al
most out of sight before the two frantic R
u
ssians made it
clear to the driver that he was to give chase, and only
when they attempted to scramble back out did he floor
his accelerator and begin a winding, screeching chase of
shadows through the darkened streets of Rome. The
prostitute was Molly, the taxi driver was Billy McHugh.
Within twenty minutes, Anton was safely at an apart
ment in the Trastevere district, negotiating the condi
tions of his defection with Paul Bannerman. Molly Far
rell and John Waldo were en route to Anton's own
apartment to retrieve those personal ef
f
ects he re
quested.

By the next morning, Anton was at his bank in Ge
neva
,
withdrawing his funds and a few securities, leav
ing intact those funds belonging to the Soviet Union. By noon he
was aboard
PAN AM
flight 006 to New York City,
traveling under a Swiss passport that he'd prepared for this eventuality. At Kennedy Airport he vanished. He
would remain in hiding until the conditions under
which he had come to this country were confirmed by
the State Department to the satisfaction of Paul
Bannerman.

Paul arrived in Washington a day later and went
directly to the office of Robert Clew, now an Under
Secretary for Political Affairs. Clew told him he had a problem. The Soviets, reacting quickly, had offered to permit the emigration of one hundred Russian Jews or to release a western agent of comparable rank if Colo
nel Zivic were returned before his defection became
public knowledge. And that, Clew told him, was only
their opening bid. The Administration was getting ex
cited because such a trade would constitute a consider
able human rights coup. In the meantime, he said,
Palmer Reid was acting as if the defection and any even
tual trade were all of his design and he wanted Zivic
brought to his Westport facility for at least a few days of
interrogation before Zivic realized he was going to be
returned.

“Reid has nothing to do with this,” Paul told him. “What Westport facility?”

Clew explained that Westport was the latest of sev
eral suburban rehabilitation centers that had become operational during the Carter Administration for the
purpose of easing burnt-out agents back into something
resembling normal lives. Once Reid was satisfied that
they could function normally, they were relocated.
Some, who had prices on their heads or criminal
charges pending against them, were given new identi
ties.

“These are like halfway houses?” Paul asked.

“Halfway towns, actually.” It was the first time Paul
heard the phrase.

“How many are there?”

“You don't need to know. . . .”

“Oh, stop that.”

“Six, counting Westport.”

Paul tried to imagine any of his people submitting to
a retraining program. “How do you get them to agree?”

“It's a condition of their pensions,” Clew answered.
“It's really not a bad deal, Paul. A contract agent nor
mally gets no pension at all, let alone help getting set up
in a new life.”

“Westport. That's Westport in Connecticut?”

“Yes.”

“And this is a humanitarian concept, you say?”   -

“That's the idea.”

”A humanitarian concept,” Paul couldn't help but
smile, “that is run by Palmer Reid.”

The under secretary grinned sheepishly and spread
his hands. “What can I tell you? Reid volunteered. No
one else wanted to touch it.”

Paul shook his head as if to clear it, then tapped
Roger Clew's desk, indicating a return to the subject at
hand. “I'm not going to surrender Colonel Zivic. And
nobody's going to trade him.”

“It could get messy, Paul. You better have some lev
erage.”

“Tell me more about Westport.”

CHAPTER 12

Roger Clew could tell Paul little in terms of specifics. He
estimated that about two thousand service employees
and contract agents had passed through the system
since the Carter years. Perhaps a tenth of those had
vanished into new identities. A few, a handful, were judged to be beyond rehabilitation and were institu
tionalized. There might be a dozen to twenty agents in
each of the six facilities at any one time, about the same
number of staff and security people; the usual stay was
about a year. At the core of each facility was a private
hospital bought with federal funds as the administration
and training center. These private hospitals did not at
tract much attention because most of the towns had a
half-dozen more just like them—private clinics special
izing in psychiatric care and treatment of drug and
alcohol abuse by the affluent. The hospitals in turn
formed dummy corporations that owned various busi
nesses in the community—shops, a couple of restau
rants, a few services—that were used for vocational training and for helping agents become accustomed to dealing with ordinary people and problems in less ex
travagant ways.

“Who does Reid answer to? Who checks up on him?”

The man shrugged. “He reports to the President's
CIA Director.”

“I'm serious.”

“Nobody. Reid is Reid.”

“What about the Inspector General's office or the
General Accounting office?”

“They can't go near it. The facilities are classified
Top Secret and Reid's funds are discretionary. He
doesn't account for them but so what? You don't either.”

“Molly?”

“Hi.”

“Is your phone secure?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Listen,” he told her, “both Reid and the State De
partment are making noises like they'd rather swap An
ton back than give him asylum. I'll make the best deal I
can but I'm going to have trouble with Reid. If it gets
nasty he might put a freeze on my funds and get State to lift my passport to make sure I'm stuck here. You get up
to Zurich first thing and clear out the account.” He read her the number and the code. “They'll want to verify, so
tomorrow at 9 A.M. your time, I'll be at the Marriott
Hotel in Stamford, Connecticut. There's also about two
hundred thousand dollars' worth of lire in my safe at the
U.S.I.A.” He gave her the combination. “Get that to
night but don't leave any signs of a break-in.”

“I'll use Billy.”

“Bring Carla and John Waldo with you to Zurich in
case you need backup. Have them stay with you when you get back to Rome and set up a system of shifts so
everybody else is outside covering your street.”

“You really do expect trouble, don't you?”

“Better safe than sorry. And you're going to be sit
ting on almost three .million dollars.”

“What's in Stamford, Connecticut?”

“That's a whole other story. Have you ever heard of a system of halfway towns that are used to retrain and
depressurize agents being retired from the field?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Ask around. There are six. Westport is one of them.
I'm going up to take a look and that's where I'll meet
with Reid. There's a phony dry-out hospital there called the Greenfield Hill Memorial Clinic. If Reid should try
to put me on ice, the way to bet is that's where I'll be. I'll
call you every day at nine in the morning and six at
night, your time. If I don't call, I've been snatched and
all of you get over here, fast.”

“Gotcha.”

“One more thing. Reid comes from Connecticut.
He's twice divorced but he has a brother and sister
living, I think, in Greenwich, and some other family in
Palm Beach. If he snatches me, you snatch at least two
of them.”

“Speaking of better-safe-than-sorry, maybe I'd bet
ter send Billy over now.”

“Maybe you'd better. After he cleans out my safe.”

“Paul?”

“That's it for now, Molly.”

“You said you'd make the best deal you can for An
ton. You wouldn't give him up, would you?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Herr Bannerman?” The voice belonged to Karl Vogele, Managing Director of the Bordier-Hentsch
Bank on Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse. “How are you today,
sir?”

“I'm fine, Herr Vogele.” Paul spoke clearly and dis
tinctly, aware that even though the banker knew his
voice it was being fed into a voice printer for positive
identification. “The transaction is authorized and Miss
Farrell is acting as my agent.”

“And how is the weather in Connecticut, sir?”

“It's not the South of France.” Any other answer, any
description of local conditions, would have alerted the
banker that Paul was calling under duress.

“Excellent,” Herr Vogele answered. “Fraulein Far
rell is anxious to speak with you. Shall I connect you to
the drawing room?”

“Thank you.” Most private Swiss bankers had small,
elegant parlor-type rooms for consultations. Conversa
tions in such rooms were never recorded. Paul waited
for Molly to pick up.

“All clear here,” she said. “Billy got your lire, no
sweat. It's converted to dollars and he's bringing you
fifty thousand of it, okay?”

“Fine. When does he get here?”

“He's already at the airport. With the time differ
ence he should show up at the Marriott around four this
afternoon after a stop in New York to buy weapons.”

“Who said we need weapons?”

“Wait'll you hear. You told me to ask around about
the halfway towns? Janet Herzog is a graduate.”

“Come on.”

“Four years ago. It wasn't Westport, it was Wilmette.
That's a suburb on Chicago's North Shore. Remember four years ago she decided to pack it in? She heard
Reagan was cutting funding for all kinds of programs
and she thought she might not get a chance at a pen
sion. They also give you. . . ,”

“I know what they give. What did she say?”

“She thought it might be worth all the bullshit they
put you through first. You know about that, too?”

“Yes.”

“Well, anyway, she said she always felt funny about it
because a couple who had left long before she did said they'd write to her but they never did. And some of the
others were real damaged goods who she couldn't be
lieve would ever be let off a leash. She left Wilmette
after about six months, which was faster than most be
cause she already had a trade—Janet designs jewelry—
and they set her up near New Orleans
with all new
paper. She was there about two months and one of
Palmer Reid's people approached her about doing a job
for them.”

“An assassination?”

“You got it. Somewhere in South America. Janet said
get lost. He came back again and got pushy and grabbed her arm, which you don't do with Janet, and she blinded
him with her car keys and then backed her car over
him. She figured recess was over so she headed back to
Rome. You didn't ask what she'd been doing all that
time?”

“I did,” Paul made a face. “She said she was design
ing jewelry.”

“Ask a silly question.”

“You better come over. All of you. Call them. Don't
go back to Rome.”

“Then what?”

He told her.

Paul drove to Westport in his rented Ford. It was an
easy fifteen minutes from Stamford on the Connecticut
Turnpike, which ran parallel to the coast of Long Island
Sound. A clear and perfect May morning. He whistled
as he drove.

From the Westport exit ramp, checking his map at
the light, he made his way to the Greenfield Hill Memo
rial Clinic on Long Lots Road. It was a huge white colo
nial, once a private estate. No gate, low stone walls, but there were sixty yards of open lawn up to
the house. No
cover. He counted two groundskeepers near the stone
wall, both idle, and two men dressed as male nurses
further on. All probably armed guards.

He continued past the clinic property and began a
random two-hour drive through the residential and
commercial streets. Pretty. Very pretty. Lots of white
and pink dogwoods. Azaleas in full bloom everywhere.
Trees fat with tender spring leaves. Comfortable
homes, the kind that were meant for living rather than
for show. The town had an informal kind of beauty, as
opposed to the self-conscious grooming of a Palm Beach
or a Beverly Hills. The people he saw seemed relaxed as
well. They had an easy this-is-who-I-am look about
them. If you like me, great. If you don't, God bless you
anyway.

A strange place to find Palmer Reid, he thought.
Reid didn't belong here. It was not a place of moves and
countermoves and lies.

As he drove, casually exploring, an idea that had begun in idle self-amusement began to sprout and ex
pand like the hemlocks he saw. It had such a sweet irony
to it that Paul knew he had to be careful not to be
enchanted by it.

Palmer Reid didn't belong here at all.

His only stop was at a bookstore where he picked up
an illustrated volume about Westport past and present
and a better map than the one he'd found in Stamford.
With these he took a roundabout route back to the turn
pike entrance, past the golf course of a place called
Longshore. His book said it was once a private country
club but now anyone could use it. A pool, tennis courts,
a handsome Norman Rockwellian
clubhouse and restau
rant right on the water. And a marina. And then a gor
geous public beach where a hundred healthy young
bodies were working on the base for their summer tans or launching small sailboats. Nice. Very nice.

He knew that he was behaving unprofessionally. This was a reconnaissance, not a Sunday drive. There
were people at the clinic who had seen his photograph,
who might have seen him pass, who might be searching
for him even now.

He didn't want them in Westport either.