Highnote said something away from the phone. “Just Merrilee and me. Are you in the city? Can I come and get you?”
“I need some answers, Bob.”
“So do I. Where the hell are you?”
“Here,” McAllister said. “At your desk in your study.”
“Good lord,” Highnote said after the briefest of hesitations. “I’ll be right in.” He hung up. McAllister put down the phone and picked up the Walther. Whom to trust? He didn’t know any longer. Perhaps he never really knew. The door opened seconds later and Robert Highnote, deputy director of operations for the Central Intelligence Agency, entered the study. He was a man of medium height, with a mostly bald head, wide honest eyes, and a manner of speaking and bearing that were almost old-worldly elegant. He was a Harvard graduate, a Rhodes scholar, and a deeply religious man. Every evening of his adult life he had spent at least one hour studying the Bible. He was something of an expert on it. His life was a story, but then so was everyone else’s in the Agency; the business seemed to attract them like flies to honey. His eyes went to the gun in McAllister’s hand. “Do you mean to shoot me too, Mac?” he asked softly.“I didn’t shoot Carrick and Maas. I think ballistics will bear me out,” McAllister said.
Highnote came the rest of the way into his study, closing the door behind him. He was coatless, but he still wore his tie. He’d probably just returned from his office. He sat down across from McAllister and reached for the desk light.
“No,” McAllister said.
Highnote stayed his hand, hesitated again, then sat back in his chair. He shook his head. “You have come as a surprise, Mac. A very big surprise.
“They were waiting for us when we got off the plane. Two of them, in ground-crew uniforms. Our pickup car was late. Carrick and Maas never had a chance.”
“But you did,” Highnote said. “I was lucky.”
“You were seen with a gun.”
“Carrick’s. I managed to wound one of them.”
“But they got away.”
“They had a car waiting for them, Bob,” McAllister said. He leaned forward a little. “They were waiting for us, goddamnit. How did they know?”
“I can’t answer that….” Highnote pursed his lips, his eyes suddenly wide. “What are you trying to say?”
“Who knew that I was coming in on that particular flight?”
“A lot of people. Smitty and his crowd. They made the actual arrangements. Finance. The crew chief.”
“And the FBI office in New York?”
Highnote nodded. “They were supposed to take you over to the shuttle terminal right there at JFK.”
“How, Bob? What was my status?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“What were the FBI told about me? And why bring them into it?
I could have walked with Carrick and Maas over to the shuttle.”
“We wanted to avoid customs.”
“You didn’t need the FBI for that… not unless I was being brought back as a criminal and you wanted no publicity.“Highnote reacted. McAllister could see it in his old friend’s eyes. Was it fear? Disgust?
“Is that it, Bob?” McAllister asked, softening his voice. “Do you think I’m a traitor because I caved in? They had me for a month, and they’re very good. Even better than they taught us out at the Farm.”
“We suspected that from the beginning,” Highnote said. “Because of… what started to happen. What’s still happening.”
“Our networks?” McAllister asked, the words catching in his throat because he knew the answer even before Highnote gave voice to it. He’d known it instinctively. Miroshnikov was more than good. The man was the devil.
“Our foreign operations are in a complete shambles. Years of work gone down the drain. A lot of good men have fallen. There’ve been a few killings, but mostly arrests, exposures, expulsions. Under the circumstances not much of a public fuss has been made, but we’ve been devastated. You can’t believe how bad it’s become.”
“Because of me.”
Highnote nodded sadly. “They went to extraordinary lengths to keep you. The President even canceled his meeting with Gorbachev in Zurich, over it. Still they didn’t budge.”
“I was a gold seam.”
“The mother lode,” Highnote said, nodding. “Once we realized what was happening, we began pulling our people out of the way, but it was already too late.”
“Christ, you can’t know how sorry I am, Bob. I tried. God help me, I tried.”
There was no compassion in Highnote’s expression, only a distant coolness and something else. His eyes went again to the gun in McAllister’s hand. “Let’s go back to the office. See what we can put together. If we know what you told them, we might be able to minimize some of the continuing damage.”
“I don’t know what I told them,” McAllister said. “But that’s not it, anyway, is it. They released me. That’s what has you worried. No exchange, no concessions, nothing, they just handed me over to our people at the airport and let me leave.”
“It worried us,” Highnote said dryly.“Then who tried to kill me in New York and why?”
“Maybe they weren’t gunning for you, Mac. Maybe they did exactly what they set out to do.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” McAllister said with frustration. “No, it doesn’t,” Highnote agreed, the same odd look in his eyes. It suddenly dawned on McAllister what Highnote had to be thinking. “You don’t believe me,” he said. “About the two men in New York”
“No one saw them,” Highnote said patiently. “I fired back and hit one of them. You’ll find a pair of bloody coveralls in a service cart at the Eastern baggage handling area.” McAllister explained exactly where it had been parked. “Has a ballistics check been made on the bullets that killed Carrick and Maas?”
“I haven’t seen the report.”
“Well do that much at least for me.”
Highnote nodded. “We’ll do that and more if you’ll come in with me. I’m on your side, Mac. So is Gloria. I talked to her again this morning. She told me that no matter what happens, no matter how it turns out, she’ll stick with you if you’ll just turn yourself in. Before it’s too late, Mac. For God’s sake.”
The words stung worse than the wet Turkish towel his Soviet guards had used on him in the prison corridor. “What was Gloria told?”
“Under the circumstances, I couldn’t do anything but tell her the truth. Surely you can understand that.”
“What truth?” McAllister asked, his voice rising. “That there was a very good possibility that you’d been turned. That they were sending you home in the hope that you would somehow come through your debriefings with a clean bill of health. That there was a possibility you would actually become operational again. They’d gotten everything they needed from you, and now they were hoping for a little gravy, a little frosting on the cake.”
“Is that what you think, Bob?” McAllister asked. Highnote looked at him for a very long time. “What else can I think?”
McAllister pushed back his chair and got heavily to his feet. Highnote started to rise too, but McAllister motioned him back. “Check with ballistics, and find the coveralls, and you’ll see that I didn’t kill Carrick and Maas. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“I can’t let you leave here.”
“I’m sorry, but you don’t have a choice in the matter right now.” Highnote bared his teeth. “Goddamnit, Mac, I trusted you! We all did. But it’s not your fault. Those bastards pumped you so full of drugs you didn’t know what you were doing. We can fix it for you. Trust me, Mac, for God’s sake..”
McAllister yanked the two phone cords out of their wall sockets.
It would only take Highnote a few seconds to get to one of the other telephones in the house, but it was something. Highnote had watched with narrowed eyes. At the window McAllister looked back at him.
“I’m not a traitor, and I didn’t kill those two in New York, Bob. But until we find
out who did, and why, I won’t have a chance in hell of convincing you, let alone anyone else, that I’m innocent. Find those coveralls, and look at the ballistics report. I’ll call you in the morning.”
As he raced across the lawn back to the street he pocketed the Walther. If Highnote didn’t believe him, who would? Worst of all it hurt that Gloria thought he had been turned. What was happening?
The police would be here very quickly, but they didn’t know his car. Getting away would be difficult, but not impossible.
As he reached the curb, an automobile’s headlights raced up from the end of the block, and someone stepped out from behind the hedges. He started to turn when something very hard smashed into the back of his skull and he fell forward, his head bouncing off the pavement. “Kill him,” someone said above him, in Russian. “Not here, you fool.”
Chapter 6
McAllister kept thinking about Highnote’s gun in his pocket, but he couldn’t seem to get his arms or legs to work. He felt like a big dishrag, limp, without any strength. But he could see and hear and feel.
The car had pulled up in front of him. The car door opened and the driver jumped out and hurried around. Strong hands pulled McAllister around, then lifted his body up, shoving him through the open door into the back seat, the smell of leather instantly surrounding him.
There were three of them. Two had been hiding in the bushes waiting for him to come from around back, and the third waiting in the big Mercedes at the end of the block. It meant that despite his earlier precautions they had managed to follow him here. Had his tradecraft been that sloppy?
“Hurry,” one of them said. In Russian. That fact finally began to penetrate McAllister’s brain. They were Russians. He’d been recaptured by the KGB, but it was ludicrous; such things did not happen in Washington, D.C., not in front of the house of the deputy director of operations for the CIA. The driver and one of the others got in the front seat together, and the third Russian piled in the back with McAllister. “There’s blood all over the place back here, fuck your mother.”
“Is he dead?” one in the front asked.
McAllister was crumpled in a heap, half on the seat, half on the floor. The car had made a U-turn in the street and was speeding back toward Washington Boulevard. His head was splitting and his stomach turned over each time the car swayed, but his strength was coming back. He’d been dazed by the blow, but not knocked unconscious. The Russian’s hands were on his body, pulling him up onto the seat. He willed himself to go completely limp, his mouth slack, his eyes open and unmoving.
“I don’t know,” the Russian said above him. “Is he breathing, you fool?”
McAllister’s left arm was jammed awkwardly beneath him, but his right hand had fallen naturally over his jacket pocket. The car swung around a corner, causing the Russian in the back seat with him to lurch. It was all the opening McAllister needed.
He screamed, rolling with the motion of the car, getting his left arm free at the same time he reached in his right pocket, his fingers curling around the Walther’s grip, and he pulled the gun out of his pocket.
“Watch out,” the one in the front seat bellowed, clawing inside his coat for his own gun.
McAllister thumbed the Walther’s safety off at the same moment the Russian in the back seat regained his balanced and kicked out. He fell back, firing at point-blank range, the bullet catching the Russian high in the chest, the noise deafening in the close confines of the automobile. He switched aim, firing a second time and then a third through the back of the front seat, shoving the second Russian forward into the dash panel, his head crashing into the windshield.
The driver slammed on the brakes sending McAllister tumbling off the seat, losing his grip on the gun. Split seconds later he managed to shove himself upright in time to see a big, silenced Makarov automatic in the driver’s left hand coming over the top of the seat, the man’s face split in a grimace of fear and grim determination. One moment the American was possibly dead, certainly unconscious, and in the next moment he had killed two men. There was no time to find the Walther. McAllister lunged left as the Russian fired, the shot creasing the side of his neck with an incredibly hot stitch. He grabbed the man’s gun arm and yanked it sharply downward over the back of the seat, the bones breaking with an audible pop as the big car jumped up over the curb and came to a stop. The Russian screamed in pain, dropping the gun. But he was a professional and very well trained. His right hand was suddenly in McAllister’s face, his blunt fingers gouging at Mac’s eyes in a last desperate attempt to save his own life.
McAllister shrugged out of the man’s reach, then grabbed him by the back of his skull and his face, and twisted his head as far to the left and backward as it would go, and then jerked it sharply beyond the breaking point. The big Russian reared up, trying to lever his body over the seat in the same direction McAllister was twisting, but the angle was all wrong for him. He gave one final massive heave when his neck broke, and his body shuddered once, and then went limp, blood pouring out of his mouth where he had bitten through his tongue.
They were in a quiet neighborhood, still in Arlington Heights a couple of blocks away from Highnote’s house, and less than a quarter of a mile from the western entrance to Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A car came slowly past, a man driving and a woman in the passenger seat. They looked over, their eyes wide as they passed, and then the car speeded up, turning the corner at the far end of the block.
They’d seen that something was obviously wrong. The car was up on the curb, two men were slumped over in the front seat, and one man with blood all over his face and neck was sitting up in the back. They would call the police as soon as they could find a telephone. He was going to have to get out of here, and now. Immediately.
It took him nearly a full minute to pull the driver’s body from behind the wheel and manhandle it into the back seat. He was weak, and his head was pounding. At times he was seeing double. He supposed he had received a slight concussion from the blow to the back of his head.
Climbing behind the wheel, he slammed the car into reverse, backed down off the curb, and then, dropping it into drive, raced to the corner and turned left. The next few minutes were going to be crucial.
Highnote would have called someone by now; possibly the police or the FBI, or possibly someone from the Agency. They’d be on their way by now. But to drive around Washington in a car filled with dead bodies and a lot of blood would be to invite certain arrest. Someone would be sure to spot him. Chances. His life had always been filled with risk. He was going to have to take a very large risk now, because he still needed answers.
Highnote’s street was still dark as McAllister pulled up and parked the Mercedes behind his rented Ford Taurus. It had been minutes since he had left his friend’s house, but he had expected at least to hear the sounds of sirens converging here by now. But no one had come. Yet.
Jumping out of the car he yanked open the rear door, retrieved the Walther, and quickly searched the three bodies, coming up with their Soviet Embassy diplomatic credentials and nearly a thousand dollars in cash. Hurrying back to the Ford he got in behind the wheel, started the engine, and pulled away.
Answers. He needed more answers.
This time he took the more direct route back into town, past Fort Meyer, up through Colonial Village, then Rosslyn and finally the Key Bridge into Georgetown, the city glittering with lights and traffic. As he drove he had used his handkerchief to clean off some of the blood from his forehead and from the gash in his neck. Neither wound was serious, his luck had held, but his head was on fire, he was sick at his stomach and his vision kept coming in and out of double. They’d been sent to the airport in New York to kill him, and again to Washington. But how had they known his whereabouts? He was certain that he hadn’t been tailed. It would have taken a team of at least four vehicles to pull it off. He’d been part of the drill for too long, and too often to be taken in by a single car behind him.
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His presence in New York could have been supplied by air traffic control at Moscow and in Paris. But here in Washington? Would they have figured that he would run first to his old friend and mentor Bob Highnote? It was logical. The question was, how many other people were looking for him at this moment? And what other places would they be watching?
Still, he told himself, he was going to have to take this risk now, no matter what the odds. He was going to have to see his wife; tell her his side of the story. She would understand and believe him. She, of any person on this earth, would have to believe in him. I’m on your side, Mac. So is Gloria. I talked to her again this morning. She told me that no matter what happens, no matter how it turns out, she’ll stick with you, if you’ll just turn yourself in.
Instead of turning up 31st Street, McAllister drove another block, turning left on 30th, and a half a block later left again on Cambridge Place which was a narrow lane that led back over to Avon. It was the back way to his house. There was no traffic here at this hour, though there were a lot of cars parked on the upper side of the street. He stopped, backed into a driveway and then pulled out again, parking twenty yards down the lane, the car now facing back out toward 30th.
He checked the Walther’s clip. There were five bullets left, including the one in the breach. Too late he realized that he should have taken one of the Russians’ weapons; the Makarov was a much heavier weapon, with far more stopping power than the lightweight Walther. The Russians’ weapons had also been silenced.
Mistakes. He was making too many of them. One piled on top of the other. Sooner or later they would cost him his life.
Getting out of the car, he pocketed the gun, crossed the street and keeping to the shadows as much as possible, hurried up to Avon Place. This was an area of smart brownstone homes, some of which had window boxes on the second story windows that in summer were alive with flowers, but were now barren. A chill, damp wind was blowing up from the Potomac with odors of river mud, diesel fumes and city. Familiar smells. Home smells. But very strange now for him, coming here like this.
The Zebra Network Page 7
