The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series) (48 page)

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Authors: John R. Maxim

BOOK: The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series)

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Billy, when he realized she was there, greeted her and was kind to her. He did not blame her.
“Grassi's fault,”
he repeated. He did not explain what the man she'd seen shot had done, or why he, or Paul, might have popped him for it themselves. She tried to believe that
popped
meant the same as
punch.
But she knew that it probably did not.

Nor did he blame her father. Billy had asked—insisted— that he fire. Whatever the risk.
“Somebody had to, ”
he said.
“No one else would. It was his own fault, ”
he said,
“that he
did not duck away from the point of your father's aim. ”
But a wounding shot from her father was better than a killing shot from the gun pressed against his neck.

Susan did not believe him. No one could calmly accept a bullet. He was being kind again. But it was not, she agreed, her father's fault. Nor was it Grassi's. It was her fault. All of it.

Paul had told her to stay. She couldn't. She didn't.

But she would not have interfered. Or cried out. And she'd kicked of her shoes, as Paul had, to move without sound. She saw Billy and the man who held him. She saw the man shoot. She saw Paul, moving silently, creeping toward him from the rear. She was about to watch him kill a man. It must have dizzied her. She grabbed for a branch. That damned branch.

He pivoted toward the noise. He would have seen it was her. He wouldn't have fired. But her father shot him. Her damned father.

And his damned daughter.

“Paul, I'm so sorry,” she said.

“It's okay,” he answered distantly. He did not look at her.

She sat in silence.

“Susan?” Billy's voice. “Come here a minute. Sit with me.”

She hesitated. But Leo Belkin was rising. She unfastened her belt. Bannerman said nothing. He seemed relieved.

“No. You rest,” the woman named Tovah insisted.

Urs Brugg shook his head. “The wound is trivial,” he said. ”I wish to speak with Mr. Lesko.”

Lesko had already risen and squeezed past Elena. He stood in the aisle, frowning. His expression said that he sided with the Israeli.

“Five minutes,” Urs Brugg said. “Then I will rest.”

“Two minutes,” said the Israeli. “No more.”

Lesko waited as the former medic gave up her seat. He eased himself down next to Elena's uncle.

”1 have been eavesdropping,” said the older man. Eiena is quite right. Kindly waste no more time in self-reproach.”

“How're you feeling?” he asked.

“Of all concerned, including Elena, my wound is the least serious. We will say no more about that either.”

“No chest wound is not serious.”

Brugg glared at him through hooded eyes.

“Okay.” Lesko surrendered. ”I did great. What else can I do for you?”

“What we discussed in Zurich. You have not changed your mind?”

Lesko shrugged vaguely.

“If I am incapacitated, Mr. Lesko, I will need you more than ever. Elena needs you in any case.”

“I'll have to go home,” he said. “Take care of a few things. But I'll be back.”

“And you'll stay?”

“I'll stay.” For a while.

“In that case, your consultancy began yesterday. Young Willem will open an account for you. Whatever you need, it is yours. Mr. Grassi will provide names and addresses, warehouses, laboratories”—Urs Brugg winced—“enough to make a beginning.”

“Are you okay?”

“It's nothing. Yes.”

“Two minutes is up. Get some rest.”

Billy McHugh made a calming gesture with his good arm.

“You got nothing to be sorry about,” he told Susan, softly. “The problem's with him, not you.”

She shook her head. “If I hadn't—”

“What happened there”—he stopped her—“is that something went a little wrong. Something always goes wrong. Most times, we handle it. This went wrong three different ways before you ever came up that path.” He held up three fingers. “Grassi played games, I didn't finish the guy last night, I didn't go for him this morning when I had the chance.”

”I got Paul shot. You didn't. I probably got you shot as well.”

Billy ignored the reference to himself. They'd covered that. “He doesn't care about the arm. Three, four months, it's good as new.”

”I really don't think he's enjoying it, Billy.”

He made a gesture of dismissal. “All he cares about, he almost shot you. He would have. Your father saved your life.”

She drew back from him, doubtfully.

”I would have shot you too, Susan. It's true. It happens that quick sometimes. Sometimes even on purpose.”

She didn't understand.

“We go on a mission,” he explained, “the idea is to do the job and not take any losses we can help. Those two things come first. We try to be neat, but people get hurt now and then. People in the wrong place, wrong time. Maybe all they're doing is walking their dog. Or they happen to be looking out a window. Sometimes it's us or them. We try not to hurt them but . . .” His voice trailed off.

She waited.

“Molly—she told me once you ought to know this. She wouldn't say it herself because—she likes you, you like her. She wouldn't want that to change.”

“And Paul?”

“Same thing. Yeah.”

”I understand. I guess.” No witnesses. My God.

“It takes time,” he told her. “Another thing, Molly's going to be real proud of you when she hears you held up this good. Most would've fell apart. You're your father's daughter, for sure.”

She started to speak. He saw anger in her. He slapped her knee.

“Next thing,” he said. “Don't get down on your father. Switch places, him and Paul, and Paul would've shot him just as fast. Except Paul wouldn't have hit no arm.”

She dropped her eyes. “He claims he's a bad shot.”

“At targets”—Billy waggled his hand—”so-so. At people with guns, he's better. Thing is, he's glad your father nailed him. For your sake and for his. We get to Lisbon, you call your father. Tell him that.”

“Billy? Why are you doing this? Being so nice to me.”

“What's not to be nice?”

”I would have thought—that you'd just want me to disappear. Get out of Paul's life.”

“That what you want?”

“I'm not sure I'm going to have a choice. I think he'll send me away.”

“He can't now. He's stuck with you.”

“Because I know so much.”

Billy shook his head. “Because other people think you do.”

She understood. She supposed. Truth be told, she really didn't know all that much about Westport. Certainly less than her father. And probably the Bruggs. And probably the fifty or so men and women who'd showed up in Marbella just because Paul was in town. There was a lot more to learn. If she wanted to learn it.

“Will you teach me?” she asked.

“Teach you what?”

“How to be useful. How not to make mistakes.”

“I'll talk to Paul. But I think we better, yeah.”

_-30-

The bone splinter, barely longer than a thumbnail, had been driven nearly through the muscles of Urs Brugg's chest. During the flight to Malaga, it caused him pain.

But on landing, when he raised himself into his wheelchair and the muscles of his powerful upper body flexed and then relaxed the pain went away. Tovah, the Israeli, said that he must not use his strength. Flexing opens wounds. It causes new bleeding. It causes fragments to move.

He paid no attention. The bullet had bounced off him. There were no fragments. And a bleeding wound, a draining wound, hurts less and is less likely to become infected than one that is closed. That aside, it felt good to test his arms and shoulders. To know, wounded or not, crippled or not, that he was still the man he had always been. That he could still manage his affairs, guide his family, help his friends, be a burden to no one.

Still, he humored the Israeli. He let his crewmen, with Lesko, lift him into the jet and settle him in his seat. He let Tovah pamper him, cover him, check his dressing, feel his pulse, until at last she had a need of her own and made her way, in the sky over France, to the aircraft's lavatory.

Left alone, he tested his strength against the arms of his seat. He lifted himself, once and again, muscles flexing, then relaxing.

The bone splinter moved. It reached the fibrous wall of his aorta. It might have slid past. But his heart had quickened. It sucked the splinter toward it.

One more time, he decided, then I will rest so that my pulse does not give me away. He raised himself once more.

Good. He felt good. A bit light-headed now, and a fullness in his chest, but these would pass. He settled back. He turned his head to watch the clouds, his eyes half-closed. The clouds moved toward him. They settled over his eyes, fogging them.

Tovah found him that way.

The Bell Ranger, diplomatic clearance confirmed by radio, had followed the broad, tree-lined avenue leading to Restauradores Square in the modern section of Lisbon. Leo Belkin guided the pilot to a squat three-story building with a curved facade and a large painted circle on its roof.

Not thirty minutes had passed before X rays and blood samples of both men had been taken and Billy was wheeled into surgery. The Russians were efficient, thorough. There was not the one promised doctor, but three, among them a Soviet bone specialist and a Portuguese neurosurgeon.

Bannerman, for his part, was satisfied that he'd suffered no nerve damage. His fingers worked stiffly but they worked. His injury could wait. Billy's couldn't. Still, he welcomed the injection that deadened his right arm from the elbow.

Susan had born up well. Even Belkin had remarked on it. She'd helped Billy onto the stretcher, helped remove his clothing, took possession of his personal effects and his pistol. An embassy guard held out his hand for it. She answered with a cool shake of her head.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected from her. Certainly a measure of apprehension considering her surroundings. At the mercy of the sinister Russians. She seemed guarded but not frightened. Nor was Bannerman at all concerned. Those who'd seen them leave knew where they were going. Carla and Janet. John Waldo, wherever he was, would soon find out. There would be no duplicity. The price would be too high.

Nor was she unduly solicitous concerning his injury. That pleased him. What's done is done. You go on from there.

The same applies, he reminded himself, to the vision that had tortured him throughout their flight to Lisbon. Susan's body. Slammed backward. Sprawling among the shrubs of the Puente Romano. Himself frozen in place, unable to move, his back to Tucker, waiting for him to shoot, or for Lesko to shoot. Hoping one of them would.

But the body was here. Alive and well. Confident. Strong. No more apologies. Let's go, Bannerman, she seemed to be saying. Quit your moping. You would have missed me anyway.

Leo Belkin reappeared. He stepped to the door of the operating room. He opened it, holding it ajar. He spoke to the surgeon in Russian. Paul knew a few words, enough to get the sense of them. The surgeon answered him sharply, then ordered him out. The colonel approached Bannerman, his expression a trifle sheepish, the look of a man who had just learned the limits of KGB authority.

“It is going well,” he told Bannerman. “He estimates two hours of surgery. Three if I pester him again.” He glanced at Susan, a slight bow, then back to Bannerman.