The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (61 page)

    
“Yes, Charles,” your recent success rate considered.
“What sort of attack would bring that happy result?”

    
“Upon the girl, sir.”

    
“The girl,” Reid repeated blankly.

    
“Lesko's daughter. She's going to die.”

On the Capitol Beltway, three miles north of Palmer
Reid's house, Molly Farrell pulled into a rest stop and
coasted to a small bank of pay phones. Janet Herzog,
wearing a spandex jogging suit and red sneakers, dozed in the passenger seat with a towel over her face to block
out the low morning sun. Molly stepped out of the car,
closed the door quietly, and walked to the nearest
phone.

Janet's jogging suit and sneakers, like Billy
McHugh's black woolens, were her working clothes.
Upon first arriving in Westport and observing the early
morning stream of joggers on almost every residential
street, she quickly concluded that her kit would not be
complete without a jogging outfit of her own. In
Westport, and possibly the whole Northeast for all she
knew, a jogging suit was ideal for scouting neighbor
hoods while seeming to belong there. Even better, she realized, no one in the suburbs ever so much as turned around at the slow slap of jogging shoes approaching
from the rear or gave a second thought to why the
woman passing had a towel tied over her head. Some
where, someday, those footsteps would be the last sounds someone heard on earth.

Molly punched out Anton Zivic's number using a
credit card. At the second ring, he picked up and said
his name.

“It's me,” she said. “We're finished here.”

“No difficulties?” he asked.

“We could have slept in his bed. He just got home an
hour ago.” Enough time, she thought, to have buried a
bug so deep they'd have to tear down walls to find it. Even a TV camera. That would have been nice. But
Anton had told her not to risk leaving any sign that his
home had been penetrated.

“How is he behaving?”

“He's getting spooked.” She told him about the calls
from Glenn and Roger Clew that were on his machine.

    
Janet was still in the house when Whitlow played them
and then called Reid home from Fort Meade. She left by
a back door as Reid arrived at the front. She went jog
ging. Thirty minutes later, two cars, each bearing two of
Reid's men, arrived and took up sentry positions along both approaches to his house. Janet jogged past both of
them, slowing to scowl suspiciously, as any local matron
should, at the sight of strange men sitting low in their cars. On her second pass she brazenly stopped to ask
one driver what business he had on her street. He wea
rily flashed a badge, inviting her to call the police if she
felt she must. Both men, she noted, wore flak jackets
and were armed with nothing heavier than machine
pistols.

   
“Glenn will keep an eye on the house?” Zivic asked.

   
“Yes.”

    
Molly smiled to herself. Glenn had already
gone to the local humane society where he had bought a
dog. Although he appreciated Janet's approach in prin
ciple, Glenn Cook hated jogging. The same result could
be achieved by walking a dog, with the added pleasure of watching it urinate against the tires of surveillance
vehicles.

    
“Janet and I are heading home.”

“I have a request of you. It is compassionate in na
ture and therefore strictly voluntary.” Anton outlined
the events at the Pollard house the night before. He
gave her the address of a home in Arlington, Virginia.
“The woman's name is Katherine. There are two chil
dren.”

“How much can I tell her?”

“You have the number of the clinic?”

Reid's phony dryout hospital in Westport. “Yes.”

“Call it from Arlington. Her husband will tell her.”

During the winter months the Orient Express
reaches Zurich an hour before dawn. It then turns
southeast toward the town of Landquart, where passen
gers bound for Klosters and St. Moritz connect with the
red cars of the Swiss Mountain Railway, while the Ori
ent Express continues on toward Austria.

Paul had asked Andrew to bring their breakfast tray at seven. That left them an hour to dress and pack, then
sit sipping co
f
fee as the sun rose over the still-distant
Alps, bringing the color of the sky to the string of lakes
that followed the tracks for most of the journey. 

At Landquart, despite Andrew's suggestion that
they wait in the warmth of their cabin until their lug
gage was brought from the baggage car, Susan dragged
Paul onto the platform, where she breathed deeply of
the Alpine air, grinning happily at the realization that
she was actually, finally, in Switzerland.

She searched the windows of the train, hoping to
wave good-bye to the Basses or to any of the other passengers they'd met since leaving London. But only
three or four faces appeared. It was still early, the morn
ing was cold, and the beds in the cabins were warm. A few others disembarked in scattered pairs. Susan won
dered aloud where they were heading. Paul told her
they would all be going to St. Moritz. She was about to
ask him how he knew that but she could see it now. The
St. Moritz passengers had twice their luggage, mostly
Gucci or Louis Vuitton. All of the women and some of
the men wore expensive furs. Two of the women had
already dressed in designer ski outfits and one wore
matching earrings. Neither, from what Susan could see,
had bothered to bring skis.

A soft gong signaled the arrival of the Klosters train.
Susan and Paul shook hands with Andrew,
gave a final wave to the Orient Express, and hauled their suitcases, ski bags and boot bags aboard for the one-hour climb
into the Parsenn range. Through most of the ride, her
excitement fought a losing battle with the altitude, and
she
struggled to keep from dozing. The snow seemed
deeper with each passing mile. A two-foot mantle of
white crowned every farmhouse and chalet. A fragile
lacing on branches and wires said that fresh snow had fallen during the night. By the time they reached Klos
ters, two
feet had grown to three.

Arriving there, as they passed their bags to the plat
form, Paul noticed a Swiss police-cruiser parked at the
station. Two uniformed officers sipped coffee from
steaming cups. Glancing around him, he saw that no
other passengers had gotten off at Klosters. He also saw,
inside the glass doors of the waiting room, a man in a
fleece-lined coat and fur hat who stood idly gazing out
onto the platform. The presence of the police, and of
the man, did not alarm Paul. He simply noticed them.
Nor were they taking any particular notice of him. Still,
he wondered. He stepped to a large yellow board cap
tioned
Abfahrt
Klosters and looked to see how soon the
next train would be coming from either direction.
There would be none for almost an hour. Now he won
dered what the man in the fur hat could be waiting for.
He glanced once more toward the policemen, then,
looking out upon the main street, began scanning to see
whether any more of the locals seemed to have time on
their hands. A white blur, a snowball thrown hard,
whizzed past his face. Susan. He turned, in a half
crouch, expecting to see her packing another one. What
he saw was Susan, hands on her hips, with a look on her
face that said
“
You cut that out. Right now.
”

Paul, with an expression of injured innocence,
claimed that he was only considering whether to show
her around the village then or later. Their apartment
was a hundred yards in one direction; the village center,
half that distance in the
other. They could take a walk
through town, put some life back into their legs, then pick up their bags on the way back. “Good thinking,’ she said. Fast thinking, she thought. But she took his
arm and steered him toward the main street. Within
less than a minute, the village of Klosters swept the
incident from her mind.

Klosters, or at least the village center, was barely two
New York City blocks from end to end. Towering moun
tains seemed to rise in every direction, their lower
slopes dotted with private homes and apartments well
into the tree line. Every building, new or old, was done
in some variation of the chalet style; carved wooden
balconies on every floor, flower boxes at every shuttered
window, roofs gently pitched to hold the snow. The guidebooks she'd read described Klosters as a quaint
Alpine village that had managed to keep its charm. That
was true enough from a distance, she supposed, but not
from up close. The place had the look of money. She counted four banks, enough for a town ten times this size, each with the exchange rates of all major curren
cies posted in its window and each posting stock prices
from the various world markets. There were two jew
elry stores displaying Rolex and Patek Philippe watches,