Bannerman's Ghosts

  BANNERMAN’S GHOSTS

  by

  JOHN R. MAXIM

  ONE

  From the site he had chosen, the rebel commander could see sixty miles of coastline. The place was Angola on West Africa’s coast. Its capital, Luanda, lay below him. Beyond was the shimmer of the South Atlantic Ocean, set ablaze as the sun neared the horizon.

  The rebel commander was called Alameo. He was a tall man, somewhat gaunt, with an intelligent face whose normal expression was the hint of a smile, but many days had passed since he’d last smiled. He was dressed in green and brown mottled fatigues that bore no insignia of rank. His only distinguishing badge was his cap. It was a French-style kepi, flat on top, blue in color, with fabric that draped to his shoulders. He was known throughout Angola by that cap.

  He had chosen this site, near the great waterfall, because it was easily defended. Only two winding roads snaked their way up the bluffs that marked the beginning of the inland plateau. Each road had a number of hairpin turns, all of which were within easy range of his mortars. An attacking force on the ground would be slaughtered. Nor did he fear an attack from the air. A canopy of forest protected his encampment from visual sightings by attack helicopters. And they would be within range of his missiles.

  But his mind on this day was not on defense. When darkness fell he would descend the bluffs with only his captain and a few hand-picked men. The Israelis, his advisors, had begged him not to risk it. Their leader, named Yoni, said, “You’re not thinking straight. We can’t afford to lose you over this.”

  Alameo answered, “He tortured her, Yoni.”

  The Israeli grimaced. “We know what he did.”

  “He cut Sara to pieces. He dismembered her, Yoni. And he kept her alive until the last cut. What she suffered was still on her face.”

  This last was not true, thought the man known as Yoni. He had seen her face himself. It was swollen, but vacant. She had indeed suffered greatly, but her face gave little sign of it. All they knew was that Savran Bobik had Sara for what must have been three terrible days. He then sent Alameo what was left of her.

  The Israeli reached his hands to the taller man’s shoulders. “Alameo…my friend…you must listen to me. I know that Sara was special to you. But she was one of us long before she met you. I trained her myself. And I loved her myself. Your claim is not greater than ours.”

  “Bobik sent her to me. Not to you.”

  The Israeli said, “Yes, but we sent her to him. Do you think I don’t wish we never asked her to do it? I would give both my eyes to have her back.”

  “I want Bobik’s.”

  The Israeli gestured toward the city of Luanda. Its lights had begun to blink on. He said, “Let us do this for you. We can move about freely. We’re Mossad, but most of us have embassy status. The worst they can do if we’re caught is expel us. You, they will shoot or much worse.”

  “You can have Savran Bobik when I’m finished with him. I intend to have him for three days.”

  The Israeli gestured toward a nearer set of lights. They came from a large bio-chemical complex surrounded by razor wire fencing. It covered at least four kilometers square. Even so, only part of the facility could be seen. It was said to go four, perhaps five stories down. The main building bore the name, VaalChem.

  Yoni asked, “Is he there? That place is guarded like a fort. How can you hope to get out alive?”

  Alameo shook his head. “He won’t be at VaalChem. Not tonight.”

  “Then where?”

  “At a warehouse that he uses. He’ll be there in two hours. He’s preparing another of his shipments of death. It will be his last. That, I promise.”

  “You are reliably informed?”

  He nodded. “I am.”

  “By whom, Alameo? Who down there can you trust? Has it crossed your mind that this might be a trap? That he’s waiting for you? That he’s ready?”

  “It has. He thinks he is. I’m not a stupid man, Yoni.”

  “If you take him,” asked Yoni, “What then?”

  “I told you. Three days. He will answer for Sara. And Bobik has much to tell us both about VaalChem.”

  “Well, do me one favor. Hold on to that thought. Savran Bobik is a sadist and an all-around pig, but VaalChem may have killed many hundreds to his one and they’ve died just as horribly as Sara.”

  “Not the same,” said Alameo. “They all thought they were sick. They weren’t strapped down while someone tore at their flesh.”

  A sigh. “Okay, agreed. Promise me I’ll get to question him.”

  “You can have him on the third day.”

  TWO

  Artemus Bourne had been expecting the shipment, but not for another few days at the least. The three red and white containers, resembling picnic coolers, bore the logo of one of the companies he owned, a biotech firm in West Africa. He would have Winfield’s hide for this stupidity.

  His instructions were explicit. They had all been ignored. The containers were to have been shipped most discretely to another of his firms in Virginia. In plain language, they were to be smuggled. They were to have taken a circuitous route from Angola, to Lisbon, to Grand Cayman, to Virginia. They were then to be driven to Briarwood, his estate. Unopened, uninspected, and untraceable.

  And yet here they were, expressed directly to his home, not only with those logos announcing their source, but with his name, in bold letters, emblazoned on the label and written in Winfield’s own hand. The writing seemed a bit shaky, but definitely Winfield’s. The damned fool must have fallen off the wagon.

  By some miracle, however, the seals were unbroken. The containers had made it through Customs unexamined. It was not that their contents were illegal per se. They were, for the most part, vaccines and antivirals that Winfield’s researchers at VaalChem had developed. Nor was it that he wished to cheat Customs of the duty on the diamonds that he knew would be included. Bourne simply wished to avoid being asked why he was building a supply of vaccines for which there was no disease.

  Most deliveries that seemed of a sensitive nature were normally taken through Briarwood’s north gate. It was approached through woodlands by a winding dirt road and likely to be free of prying eyes. A guard stationed there had accepted the containers and had driven them up to the house. The guard apologized; he said he realized it was Sunday, but a Sunday delivery had been specified for some reason. The guard knew that Sundays at Briarwood were special and Winfield had surely known that as well. Sunday was brunch day. It had become an institution. In an hour, some two dozen guests would be arriving, two senators and a cabinet secretary among them. They would have a pleasant brunch and then get down to the business for which he’d helped put them in office.

  But an hour is an hour and he might as well use it. Putting his annoyance aside for the moment, he hauled the three containers down the stairs to his basement. He would read the reports that had come with the vaccines. The clinical trials on humans had gone well, according to his last word from Winfield. This time all the subjects had survived.

  And he’d look at the diamonds, unpolished, uncut. He’d been told that they were of exceptional quality, worth three times the value of comparable-sized stones that were mined in South Africa by DeBeers. He didn’t doubt it, given their source. Angola’s diamonds were the best ever found. Even so, to his eye, they looked like ordinary pebbles of the sort that one might find in any streambed.

  Truth be known, these stones were almost as worthless by any practical measure. He knew that diamonds were neither rare nor intrinsically valuable. The only functional quality of a diamond was its hardness. Its only real use was on the tip of a cutting tool. But DeBeers had done an excellent job of not only hoarding and rationing their supply, but in making them the sine
qui non of romance. Diamonds are forever. A girl’s best friend and all that. Never mind that the two-carat rock on her finger would be worth not much more than a good pair of shoes if DeBeers’ stranglehold were to end.

  And it will, thought Bourne. It most deservedly will. Once we’ve solved certain problems in Angola.

  In his basement, he paused at a floor to ceiling wine rack that was actually a door to Bourne’s private world. It was an area off limits to household staff and unknown to all but a few close associates. He slid the rack open and carried the containers into what once had been a bomb shelter.

  A former owner had added the shelter back in the Eisenhower era. It had been quite elaborate even then. It had two bedrooms, a pantry, a fully equipped kitchen and its own ventilation and filtration systems. Bourne had since made a number of refinements. The largest of the bedrooms was now a laboratory. He’d installed all sorts of HazMat equipment including a chemical shower. This was at Winfield’s request. The man liked to putter. But he also took the view that he’d like to survive should there ever be an accident with the bacilli. There was even a bolted-down cot with restraints and a stainless steel autopsy table. These latter two were there because Winfield had them on his wish list, but Bourne had forbidden their actual use. This was his home after all. One had to draw the line somewhere. No unwilling live subjects. No, not even monkeys. Monkeys scream even louder than humans.

  Winfield also added the requisite electronics. Computers in the lab and in the smaller of the bedrooms. But Winfield’s visits were occasional. Bourne was down there all the time. So Bourne added a bank of video monitors that surveilled all activity in the house and on its grounds.

  The smaller bedroom was still that, a bedroom. He’d had it furnished to Winfield’s taste so that Winfield could remain down there out of sight whenever he flew over to confer. Bourne also gave that bedroom a nice solid door that Bourne was able to bolt from outside. This wasn’t done for any sinister purpose. It was simply to keep Winfield away from the wine racks that filled half the cellar.

  And they’d added a freezer, actually more of a vault, of a size that many a small bank would envy. It already held several hundred thousand units of various vaccines and bacilli. And in a separate section, in a safe within a safe, were the little glass ampules that Winfield had devised to contain a most remarkable substance. There were four of these ampules, each three inches long, each partly filled with a superfine powder. Bourne had no plans for them; he simply liked having them. They were so exquisitely deadly.

  He had almost come to think of these ampules as pets. He would never admit that. He knew it sounded insane. But the substance inside them would physically react every time he opened that safe. It was only the vibration; the stuff was so light and fine. It would do a little dance within the ampules. They were like wiggley puppies wagging their tails at the sound of their master’s approach.

  He had placed the three containers on a table in the kitchen. He cut the seals on all three and opened the one to his right. He let out a yelp and staggered backward. For there, looking up at him, was a human head, lips parted as if trying to speak.

  Bourne took a moment to gather himself. He took several deep breaths to help quiet his pulse. He stepped forward again and looked down at the face. It was not one he recognized. A stranger. Under it, around it, he saw shattered glass vials and a puddling of the fluids that they had contained. They had all been intermingled and crushed. He used a kitchen spatula to open another, this time the one on the left. This time he had managed to prepare himself somewhat. The second head was less of a shock, but he recoiled all the same; this one stank. This one must have been dead some time longer.

  Bourne pinched his nose as he took a closer look. Dark skin, quite dark, but a white man, no native. His features seemed, if anything, Slavic. He had a dense curly beard and a mane of black hair that would have been shoulder length if he had shoulders. Like the first, he was resting on a bed of broken glass. And he seemed to have a mouthful of diamonds.

  Bourne felt sure he didn’t know him, but he couldn’t be certain. The face had been battered beyond ready recognition. He had the look of a man who’d died trying to scream, or trying not to choke on those stones. This one had undergone something special. The eyes were swollen shut to mere slits. His cheeks were doubled in size, their bones probably crushed and his jaw was askew as if torn from its socket. This one seemed to have something carved into his forehead. Bourne couldn’t make out what. The flesh had suppurated. Someone should have thought to add ice.

  Bourne heaved a sigh. He put the spatula down. He opened the middle container with his hand. He’d expected, he supposed, to find another unknown face, but there was no mistake about this next one. This one wore bifocals in a tortoise shell frame and had the same look of befuddled detachment that he’d worn since Bourne had first met him. The head had belonged to Sir Cecil Bonham Winfield, Chief Virologist and Director of VaalChem. This would tend to explain why Winfield’s handwriting had suggested diminished capacity. He must have done those labels with a knife at his throat. And later, after his head was detached, someone must have decided to put his glasses back on. It seemed unlikely that they would have stayed in place as his head rolled across a floor somewhere.

  Well, that’s it, thought Bourne. So much for his brunch. He would have to disappoint them, turn all of them away. His mind would not be on business.

  He looked for a note. Some sort of a message. Sending three heads did not seem the sort of thing that the sender would want to be obscure about. Not that he didn’t have a pretty good idea as to who was most likely behind it. There was a man who’d become a considerable hindrance to certain of his projects in that part of the world. A man who had already cost him dearly.

  But why this? Why now? What had brought it about? Perhaps a note had been included, underneath somewhere, amid the shattered vials and their former contents plus whatever other fluids had seeped from their heads.

  Bourne wasn’t about to go rummaging for it. He would summon Chester. He would let Chester do that. And whether or not Chester found such a missive, he suspected that Chester would be able to shed light on why his weekly brunch had been disturbed in this manner. Some months ago, he’d put Chester in charge of overseeing certain of his Angolan operations. An unpleasant place. Barbarous. But then, so is Chester. Wasn’t Chester just over there? A week ago, yes. One assumes that Winfield had a head when Chester saw him. Otherwise, he’d have noticed something amiss.

  “Amiss,” muttered Bourne. “I think I’ve just made a joke.”

  Whatever the story, enough was enough. Bourne was fairly sure that he knew whom to thank for this morning’s unpleasant surprise. If the man he had in mind was the source of this atrocity, it was time that he learned that he was not beyond reach. Bourne knew just how to get him, how to make him rue this day.

  He would say to Chester, “I have run out of patience. I want you to locate Elizabeth Stride. I want no more excuses. Go find her.”

  THREE

  Bourne instructed the guards at the main gate of Briarwood to make his apologies to his guests. They were to radio those who would arrive by helicopter and say that the event had been postponed. They were told to cite a dangerous gas leak as the reason for the sudden cancellation. They were to say that Mr. Bourne would be calling them later to convey his sincere regrets in person. Bourne then summoned Chester Lilly through his pager.

  Such a name, thought Bourne, for such an ungentle man. Bourne had wondered how Chester had survived his childhood. The name must have been a magnet for bullies. The answer, of course, was that Chester was a brute. He would almost surely have out-bullied the bullies. If not, he would have revisited them later. He was not one to turn the other cheek.

  It wasn’t that Chester was especially large. He was, in fact, an inch shorter than Bourne himself, but of course much more solidly built. And, unlike himself, he had a head of golden hair, maintained by a Houston hairstylist named Terrence. He would actual
ly fly back to Texas for a trim. Chester wouldn’t let anyone else touch it.

  Chester’s wavy locks were his only real vanity. He did not have much else to choose from. Chester had a face that could turn one’s blood cold just by staring, often smiling, not saying a word. His smile held the promise of what he would do if only his employer gave the nod. And that expression was pretty much the only one he had. This was all well and good where intimidation was called for, but limiting, certainly, in other endeavors such as trying to meet women, for example. Not that Chester liked women. Not that Chester liked anyone. But he did like power and he liked being feared and he could be relied on to do as he was told. These qualities made him a valued assistant as long as one held his baser instincts in check.

  He’d told Chester to enter through the north gate in order to avoid being seen

  by his turned-away guests. They would know that he does not repair gas leaks. He’d told Chester to park his car behind the stables and then come directly to the basement. He was not to pause to taunt any of the horses or to frighten the peacocks that wandered the grounds or to put a bullet through one of the beehives. He’d actually done that. The man had tried to shoot bees. It seems the bees mistook his hair for a mum and attempted to mine it of pollen.

  This time he avoided them or they avoided him. Bourne watched him on the screen of one of his monitors as Chester approached without incident. Bourne waited, arms folded, by the three open coolers as Chester made his way down the stairs. He would let them speak for themselves. Chester appeared and greeted him with a nod, but his eyes quickly fell on the coolers. Chester stared, then almost smiled, and made a soft whistling sound.

  He pointed. “In the middle…that’s Winfield?”

  “It was.”

  “Seems I’m not the only one who didn’t like him very much.”

  “An astute observation, Mr. Lilly. And the others?”