The Zebra Network

by Sean Flannery

  There were still large areas of his memory that were gray, incomplete, as if he had lived most of his weeks in captivity in a surrealistic dream. It was frightening.

  “The longer you are out and around the more likely it will be that someone will spot you,” she’d said.

  “They think I’m dead, remember?”

  “You have friends, acquaintances, people who would recognize you. Are you so sure you won’t bump into one of them?”

  Over the past days Stephanie had bought him some clothes, atoiletries kit and a nylon overnight bag, shopping at different stores in Baltimore and in the suburbs so as not to attract attention. She’d also trimmed his hair and picked up a pair of clear-lensed glasses. His appearance was altered only slightly, but enough they’d both hoped to throw off at least a casual observer. The changes would not fool anyone who knew him well, but the cop on the beat who might have his photograph wouldn’t look twice.

  There were acceptable risks and unacceptable risks. What separates the two is the desired goal. The more important the object, the larger the acceptable risk.

  “The answers are in Washington,” he’d told her. “I can’t avoid that fact. Nor am I going to run away.”

  “I didn’t expect you would.”

  “We’ll meet at the hotel at noon.”

  She’d looked at him, wanting to say more, but she finally nodded, grim-lipped, and left.

  He parked the car on Q and 30th streets and walked back the long block, turning right on 31st toward Tudor Place around the corner from his house. It was odd being back like this in his old neighborhood, made doubly odd by an almost detached feeling that had gradually settled on him over the past days.

  Walking along the nearly deserted streets, snow still lightly falling, he was reminded of a similar weekend years ago when he and Gloria were trying to decide if they wanted to buy in this area. It had been early winter like now, and they had taken a walk around the neighborhood to get a feel for the place. They’d liked what they’d seen, and on Monday had signed the papers.

  They’d not been back here together for more than a few months at a time since then… between foreign postings… so that this place had not really become home for him. He’d always looked upon the house as a vacation spot-or, rather the place they would come to when he finally got out of the business; something Gloria had been pressing him about for the past four or five years.

  She, on the other hand, loved this place, and despite their frequent long-term absences had made it into a home. Whenever they were back she would hold cocktail parties or dinners for people they knew from the Agency. She was a good hostess, and he looked back on those times with warm thoughts.

  But now he was returning a fugitive, and he had no real idea why he was taking this risk, except for the notion at the back of his head that the surveillance team would have been pulled away, and that Gloria would be home and that he could see her, find out what she had been told, convince her that she was wrong, that he hadn’t become a traitor. His father had fallen in love with Gloria. “Now there’s a decent woman for you, boyo,” he’d said when McAllister had told him they were engaged. “A man in this business needs his Rock of Gibraltar to keep the home fires burning and the cannons loaded.” Someone to give you a reason to come back. Someone to tend your wounds, soothe your hurts.

  His mother had died when he was very young, and his father had never remarried. “No one to replace her,” the old man had said. “And I’m too busy now to go looking for another one.”

  He reached Avon Place and started around the corner, but pulled up short and stepped back. A black Cadillac was parked in front of his house, its engine running, the exhaust swirling white in the cold wind.

  From where he stood, McAllister had only to lean forward slightly and he could see around the edge of the brownstone on the corner. He closed his eyes for a moment, the pain rising up through his body. He knew who would be coming out of the house. He knew whose car it was. But he didn’t want to think why. Too many things that Stephanie had told him seemed to fall into place now, and he knew that this was the very reason he had come here.

  The front door of his house opened. Gloria emerged on Robert Highnote’s arm. At the foot of the stairs they stopped a moment and said something to each other, Gloria looking up into his face. Highnote was carrying one of her suitcases.

  They crossed the sidewalk and Gloria got in on the passenger side. She was to be used as bait. They knew you would be coming home. She was your refuge. She and Robert Highnote.

  So far as anybody knows you’re dead. They’re looking for your body, expecting it to turn up sooner or later. Your body, not you. But Gloria was not grieving. He had been near enough to see that she had been smiling up at Highnote. No black veil over her face, no body slouched over in the pain of loss. Only a man and a woman together. Going where… to do what… to speak what words together?

  Highnote walked around to the driver’s side of the Cadillac and got in behind the wheel. Suddenly McAllister realized that within seconds they would be driving past him. His slight disguise might fool a stranger, but it would not fool his wife and best friend.

  He turned and hurried down the street, ducking through an iron gate that led down to a basement entrance to one of the brownstone houses just as Highnote’s car came around the corner and sped past.

  When they were gone, McAllister came back up to the street level, hesitated a moment and then trudged back to where he had parked his car. He had the distinct feeling now that he was a man who had just witnessed his own funeral. The problem was, no one had been grieving.

  They almost missed each other. Stephanie had been waiting for nearly fifteen minutes, and thinking that something had gone wrong, was about ready to drive over to their fallback when he showed up.

  The relief on her face when she spotted him was clear, but then her expression darkened when she understood that something had happened to him.

  She got out of the van when he pulled up and hurried over to him. “I’ve been going out of my mind. I thought they’d grabbed you. Is everything all right?”

  “No,” McAllister said climbing out of the car. “What happened?”

  He looked into her eyes. “I didn’t want to do this, Stephanie, but I’m afraid I’m going to need your help.”

  “You have it, I told you that before. Now, what happened to you this morning?”

  “I saw something that I didn’t want to see. Something I never thought I’d see.”

  Sudden understanding dawned on her face. “You’ve been to Georgetown,” she said softly. “To your wife.”

  “She and Bob Highnote were there at the house. Together.”

  “They didn’t see you, did they?” McAllister shook his head. “Are they still there?”

  “They left.”

  Stephanie thought about it a moment. “Doesn’t prove anything. You said you’ve been friends for years.”

  “Merrilee wasn’t with them. She should have been the one to be there.”

  “Have they got a thing for each other, is that what you’re suggesting?”

  “No,” McAllister blurted, surprised with the intensity of his denial. “Your best friend and your wife both think that you’re a traitor. There isn’t much left for you, is there?”

  “Christ… I don’t know any longer.”

  “But you’re innocent. You’re not a traitor.”

  “Maybe I am… maybe

  Stephanie reached out and touched his face. “I can understand why the Russians came after you the way they did. And I can understand why you defended yourself. But… and listen to me very carefully… no matter what the FBI or the Agency thinks about you, we simply don’t do things like that in this country. Those were two Americans who came after you on Highnote’s sailboat. They flushed you out of hiding and shod you. No arrest, no trial, nothing. They simply shot you and left you for dead. If that had been an Agency operation the entire town would have been crawling with security officer
s. You would have been given a chance to give yourself up and stand trial. But if there had been a shooting, there would have been three dozen guns opening fire, not two.”

  McAllister looked at her. Despite her naivete she was right. Something else was going on here. Something terribly dark and dangerous, and he was at the core of it, but he had no idea why.

  They registered as husband and wife under the name G. Arthur. Their room on the third floor was clean but old and tattered. Stephanie left through the back, parked her van in a garage a couple of blocks away just off Vermont Circle, and returned on foot. Her face was flushed and her eyes bright when she came in and tossed her coat on the bed. “What we need is information. And Dexter Kingman is the man to get it for us.”

  McAllister had done a lot of thinking in the twenty minutes she was gone, and he had come to a similar conclusion, but along a different line.

  “I agree,” he said. “But if we get your boss involved, you’ll lose your anonymity.”

  “I don’t give a damn…

  “I do,” McAllister said. “Up to this point you still have freedom of movement, which means you can get into headquarters without question, something I cannot do.”

  “What are we supposed to do, sit here all weekend? Sooner or later they’ll realize that you’re not dead, and then they’ll tear Washington apart looking for you.”

  “For me, not us.”

  Stephanie was frustrated. “What are you going to do?”

  “We need information. Voronin’s Zebra One and Two might be nothing more than a coincidental use of the word. It may have nothing whatsoever to do with the O’Haire network.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “No, and you don’t know otherwise. So it’s our first step. If there is a connection we have to find it. And there’s one man who can give me that information. One man who will agree to meet with me on my terms, without involving you directly.”

  “You’re going to call Highnote and tell him that you’re alive and here in Washington?” she asked incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  “Why him?” she asked. “Aside from the fact that you don’t want me getting myself openly involved with you, which is what would happen, of course, if I called Dexter. Why not wait until Monday when I’m back at the office? I can poke around and possibly find out something for you.”

  “Too dangerous.”

  “Don’t make me laugh… too dangerous. Your meeting with Highnote wouldn’t be? Come off it, there’s something else going onhere. You’re out to prove something to him. But what if he’s Zebra One? Have you thought about that?”

  “Then I’d have that information.”

  “You’d have a bullet in the head,” she said. “He’d get a medal for killing you, that is if he didn’t call out the troops and have them do his work for”

  “Either way I’d have my answer.”

  “If he is the penetration agent, do you plan on killing him?” McAllister nodded. “If he isn’t?”

  “Then he’ll help me.”

  Stephanie shook her head. “Are the choices that simple for you?

  Or are you just trying to prove something to him, or to your wife, or to yourself?”

  “I don’t know,” McAllister said. He went to the window and looked down at the street. “My life ended a month and a half ago when I was arrested in Moscow. I want it back, that’s all. Is that so difficult to understand? I’ll do whatever’s necessary to settle this insanity one way or the other. Whatever is necessary.”

  “Then I’ll help you, if you’ll let me.”

  “What if I fail?” he asked, turning back to her. “Then we’ll fail together.”

  He stared at her for a long time. “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me? Turn around and go back to your apartment. On Monday report for work and forget about me.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Why? Can you tell me that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, taking time with her answer. “I just know that it started at Sikorski’s house when you didn’t kill me, and again on Highnote’s sailboat when you were left for dead.”

  “I’m not one of your strays.”

  “No, you’re not. And I’m no longer my father’s little girl.”

  “Then we’ll do it my way,” McAllister said. “As long as I’m included.”

  “I don’t think it would be so easy to get rid of you.”

  “No it wouldn’t be.”

  The early evening was dark, made even more so by the overcast sky, as McAllister entered the cavernous main hall of Union Station on Massachusetts Avenue. He angled left directly toward a bank of telephone booths across from the National Visitors Center. The station closed at midnight, but at this hour on a weekend the concourse was all but deserted. Entering the third booth from the far right he glanced at his watch. Stephanie would be in place by now fifteen miles to the north at the Guilford Rest Area on 1-95. She had left her van at her apartment and had borrowed her roommate’s nondescript Chevette for the night. It would avoid the risk that Highnote might spot the van and recognize it. That wasn’t very likely, but he didn’t want to take any more chances than necessary. As it was there was far too much that could go wrong; far too much over which he had no control. The telephone rang a minute later and he picked it up immediately. “Yes?”

  “I’m in place,” Stephanie said. “Is there any traffic?”

  “Not much. It’s still snowing up here, how about there?”

  “It’s stopped, but we’ll allow an extra ten minutes. Anything happens, get the hell out of there.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Right,” McAllister said. He broke the connection, plugged a quarter into the slot and dialed Highnote’s home number. He hit the timer function on his wristwatch. If there was automatic tracing equipment on the DDO’s telephone it would take two minutes for an exchange to come up, three minutes for the complete number. He was giving himself ninety seconds, maximum.

  Merrilee Highnote answered on the third ring. “Hello?” McAllister deepened his voice. “This is Mr. Highnote’s office. Is he at home, ma’am?”

  “Yes, just a moment please.” She hadn’t recognized his voice. McAllister watched the digital numbers on his watch. A full twenty seconds from the moment he had completed dialing elasped before Highnote came on the line.“Who is calling this number? You know the SOP…”

  “It’s me,” McAllister interrupted.

  For several long seconds the line was silent. McAllister kept an eye on his watch. On incoming traces you stall the caller for as long as possible using any ploy that comes to mind. Highnote was an old pro.

  “You are alive,” Highnote said softly. “I knew it…”

  “We have to meet, tonight.”

  “Where have you been, Mac? What happened to you in Dumfries? My God, we’ve been searching the river for more than a week.”

  “I want you to come alone and unarmed. Don’t call anybody, don’t leave any messages.”

  “Whatever you say. It might be easier for you to come here, but I’ll come to you, if that’s what you want. Just tell me when and where.”

  “There is a rest area just south of Guilford, Maryland, on 1-95. It’s about fifteen miles north of Washington.”

  “I know where it is,” Highnote said. “I can be there in a half hour, maybe forty minutes.”

  “You’ll have to exit at Guilford and come back. I’ll be waiting on the southbound side.”

  “Are you alone, Mac?”

  “I’m alone,” McAllister said. “And you’d better be too.”

  “I won’t say a word to anyone, I swear it. Just don’t do anything foolish this time.”

  “Like what, defend myself?” McAllister asked. More than seventy seconds had already elapsed.

  “They were Russians in that car.”

  “And Americans at your boat, Bob. I want some answers. A lot of answers.”

  “I’ll do my best. But it would be a lot saf
er for both of us if we met at the Farm.”

  “I’ll expect you in fifty minutes at the outside,” McAllister said. “And from where I’m standing I can see a long way in every direction.”

  “Can I bring you anything… anything at all… The ninety seconds were up. McAllister cut the connection, then left the phone booth and walked rapidly out of the station back towhere he had left his car in the Quality Inn parking lot a block away. He had a fifteen-minute head start on Highnote, and he figured he’d need every minute of it.

  Stephanie waited in her roommate’s car parked in the southbound Guilford rest area, watching the traffic. Her window was down a couple of inches so that she would be able to hear approaching sirens, if any, or the noise of helicopters coming up from the south. It had been a full thirty-five minutes since she had spoken to McAllister, and during that time she had begun to imagine all sorts of things going wrong. Highnote wasn’t home, or he had refused the meeting. Someone had spotted Mac and there had been a shootout. His telephone call had been successfully traced and he was cornered now. There were any of a dozen possibilities which plagued her as she sat in the cold car, waiting. Nothing had happened so far. Most of the traffic were semis. A dozen of the big trucks, their engines running, were parked just now in the rest area. There’d never been more than three or four cars at a time. And no car that had come in since her call to McAllister had remained for more than a few minutes.

  From where she sat she could see across the wooded median to the northbound rest area several hundred yards away. Traffic had been about the same over there. Although she wasn’t able to pick out individual makes of cars because of the darkness and the distance and the snowfall, she could tell them from the trucks.

  As she watched, a car backed into a parking spot, its left blinker went on, then off, its highbeams flashed once, then a second time, and then were extinguished. It was McAllister’s signal: He had made it after all. One flash without the directional meant their plan had been aborted for one reason or the other. One flash with the directional meant Highnote was on his way. A second flash was her signal to wait an additional five minutes and then telephone him.