The Zebra Network

by Sean Flannery

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “A phone booth in Arlington, not far from your house.”

  “I have a couple of blanks in the wall safe in my study. Do you know where it is?”

  “Yes.”

  Highnote gave him the combination. “There’s some cash in there too, but you won’t be able to take a gun through customs. Especially not into the Soviet Union.”

  “I know,” McAllister said.

  “The passports are blank, what about an artist?”

  “Munich.”

  “And then what, Mac? Say you do get to Borodin by some miracle, do you think he’ll talk to you?”

  “I won’t know that until I try.”

  “Don’t do it,” Highnote said earnestly. “Please, think it over.”

  “I have,” McAllister said. “Is your house being watched?”

  “No.”

  “How about Merrilee and… Gloria?”

  “After the shooting they were taken down to one of our safe houses in Falls Church. I don’t think you should go there.”

  “No,” McAllister said, and he was surprised that there wasn’t as much pain thinking about his wife as he thought there should be. “But take care of yourself, Bob. Potemkin’s penetration agent will have to know that we’re on to him once he finds out his control officer is dead.”

  “Don’t do this,” Highnote tried one last time. “No choice. I don’t think I ever had a choice,” McAllister said, and he hung up.

  Stephanie opened the door for him, and the instant their eyes met he knew that he had come to some decision that would change everything. But she was also relieved that he had come back in one piece.

  “Did he show up alone?” she asked when he was inside and the door was closed and locked.

  “No,” McAllister said facing her. “He brought four others with him.

  She was holding herself very still. “What happened?”

  “They’re all dead.”

  “Including Potemkin?” McAllister nodded. “Are you… all right?”

  “No,” he said sighing deeply to relieve the immense pressure in his chest and his gut. “But I’m not hurt.”

  “Oh, David,” she said and she went into his arms. He held her close while he stroked her hair, drinking in her smell, her feel. “I killed them and it was so easy. Easier than you can imagine.”

  She said nothing.

  After a moment he began telling her what had happened from the time he spotted the Mercedes coming from the embassy on Sixteenth Street until he’d driven back to Arlington. He left out nothing, except for the role her father had evidently played, and he did not gloss over any of the details. He felt that in some small measure she needed to hear it all from him because of what had been done to her father. Revenge, perhaps a catharsis; he thought she needed to believe that they were striking back. That they weren’t simply sitting still for the terrible events of the past days.

  “Was it bad?” she asked when he was finished. “Yes.”

  She was searching his face for a sign that it was over now, that they had won. But she wasn’t finding it.

  “What did you do with the Mercedes?”

  “I parked it in a garage downtown and took a cab back here. It’ll take them a while to find it. With any luck not until tomorrow or the next day.”

  Again she looked closely at him. “There’s more.” She said it as a statement not a question.

  He nodded. “I telephoned Bob Highnote at the hospital.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “They’ll be releasing him in a day or two. I had to warn him that when Potemkin’s body is found the penetration agent will know that we’re close.”

  “He’ll run.”

  “Maybe not. It depends upon how much he’s got left to protect here. Perhaps the O’Haires were just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps someone will take Potemkin’s place.”

  “And what did he say?” Stephanie asked, and McAllister turned away, but she pulled him back. “What else, David?”

  There was so much he wanted to tell her, and yet he simply could not. So much she deserved to know, and yet he didn’t think she could stand it.

  “I’m going after General”

  “In Moscow,” she said calmly. “Yes.”

  “When? How?”

  “Montreal in the morning where we’ll change our appearances back to match our real passports. From there to Frankfurt, then by car to Munich where I will get us new passports.” He pulled out the diplomatic blanks he’d taken from Highnote’s wall safe. “We’ll use these.”

  “After Munich, what?” she asked, barely glancing at the passports. McAllister thought she was on the verge of exploding. “Helsinki,” he said. “Then Moscow?”

  “You’re staying in Helsinki.”

  “To do what?”

  “If I’m not out in forty-eight hours, you’re going to call Highnote, and if need be our embassy, the Finnish authorities, and even the Associated Press. You’re going to put up a very big stink.” She smiled, but it was extremely fragile. “All of this while you’re somewhere inside the Soviet Union. A convicted American spy whom everyone wants dead. With no weapon, up against one of the most powerful generals in the country.” She laughed, her eyes suddenly glistening. “David, that is outside the realm of reality. For once I have to agree with Highnote, it’s insanity.”

  McAllister turned away again, this time she didn’t stop him. He went across the room and stood by the window. There are demons in my head, and I cannot control them. There are forces driving me that I cannot understand. He wished that his father were here with him now; he hadn’t wished for anything so wrongly in his entire life. I’m frightened and I don’t know of what. “Stop it, my darling,” Stephanie said coming up behind him. He shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. Howard Van Skike, director of central intelligence, entered the President’s study. A lot of worried people were huddled around the desk, talking with the President. One of his advisers was talking urgently on the telephone, and others had gathered in a tight knot across the room, and were deep in conversation. John Sanderson, the director of the FBI, broke away from the group at the desk and came over. “He’s got a news conference scheduled for noon.” He looked at his watch. “Gives us a bit more than three hours to come up with something for him.”

  “What’s going on?” Van Skike asked, his gut aching. It was a flare up of his ulcer. He’d been taking Maalox by the bottleful for the past three days.

  “We may have been wrong about McAllister,” Sanderson said. “Dead wrong. There are some questions that don’t seem to have any logical answers.”

  “Does this have to do with Don Harman?”

  “In a big way, Van. As it looks now, Don was meeting the O’Haire woman with the intent to kill her when they were both gunned down.”

  “What?” Van Skike breathed, barely able to believe what Sanderson was saying.

  “Harman may have been the penetration agent we’ve been looking for. Or at least one of them. We’re not sure, of course, but a lot of the signs are pointing his way. Remember, we had witnesses placing a tall, well-dressed man at McAllister’s house the morning of the College Park shooting?”

  Van Skike nodded. The President had looked up. “Hold on for a couple of minutes, would you, Van?” he said.

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “It’s looking more and more possible now that the man they saw was Don Harman.”

  “Working with McAllister and the Albright woman?”

  “No,” Sanderson said. “Innes had taped the proceedings, something McAllister might have guessed, but that the killers missed. One of them said two words: ‘Get him.” A man’s voice. Our lab people came up with a tape of McAllister’s voice from your Technical Services Division. Something recent, from what I understand. They ran it through their voice-spectrum analyzer. Looks like the man who spoke on the tape and McAllister are not one and the same.” Van Skike started to object, but Sanderson held
him off. “It’s shaky at best, I know. Impossible to be one hundred percent accurate with two words. But it’s an indication.”

  “Which still leaves us with the question of who was working with Harman, and exactly what McAllister has been doing these past weeks.”

  “He was fighting back,” Sanderson said. “He evidently learned something in Moscow that pointed toward Harman… we’re just guessing now, of course. When the Russians released him Harman ad him set up for the kill. He’s been trying to protect himself ever since.”

  “And doing a damned fine job of it.”

  Sanderson nodded. “He’s the best, there’s no doubt of it.”

  “What now?”

  “I’ll let the President tell you,” Sanderson said, glancing across the room. Oh, by the way,” he added, turning back. “Did you hear at Mel Quarmby died last night?”

  “No,” Van Skike said. “I’m sorry to hear that. He was a good man.”

  “How about Bob?”

  “He checked himself out of the hospital last night. He feels he has a personal stake in this business. He and McAllister have been friends for a lot of years.”

  Sanderson gave him an odd look which Van Skike found strangely disturbing at that moment. It was as if the FBI director knew something he wasn’t telling.“Gentlemen, I want you to clear out of here now. Give us a few minutes,” the President said. He motioned for Van Skike and Sanderson to remain behind.

  The others filed out of the room, the last one to go closing the door softly.

  “The shit is about to hit the fan,” the President said, coming around from behind his desk when they were alone. “Has John filled you in with the latest developments?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Van Skike replied. “But I’m finding it hard to believe that Don Harman was working with the Russians.” The President smiled wryly. “You’re telling me,” he said. “In the meantime I’ve got the media swarming all over the place screaming bloody murder. They want answers, and I can’t blame them.” He shook his head. “Trouble is, I don’t know what I can tell them.”

  “The truth,” Van Skike said. “Or at least a part of it for now.” Again the President smiled. “Which truth, Van? Without McAllister we’ve got nothing. On top of it all, John thinks Harman might not have been working alone. There might be someone working out of your pasture across the river. Nice thought, isn’t it?” Van Skike shot Sanderson a look, but the FBI director ignored it. “McAllister may be the only man who has the answers we need. I want him brought in, no screwing around this time. I’m personally guaranteeing his safety. I’ll give him a presidential pardon, whatever it takes to convince him that I mean business.”

  “If you can get a message to him somehow, tell him to call the President,” Sanderson put in.

  “I’ll speak to him,” the President said. “Just get to him.”

  “That may not be so easy,” Van Skike said half to himself. He looked up out of his thoughts. “Bob Highnote knows him better than any man alive. I’ll put him on it. If anyone can find McAllister it will be him.”

  John Sanderson met George Mueller, chief of the FBI’s CounterIntelligence Division, at the west exit. Together they went outside and got into Sanderson’s car.

  “What do you think?” Mueller asked. He was a short, stockilybuilt man with thick dark hair and an intense air about him. He’d been a close personal friend of Alvan Reisberg.

  “He’ll hand it over to Highnote,” Sanderson said. Their driver pulled away from the portico, and started down the long driveway.

  “Did he take the bait?” Mueller asked.

  Sanderson looked at him. “I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “In the meantime almost anything can happen….” Mueller growled. “Easy,” Sanderson warned.

  Van Skike thought that Bob Highnote looked on the verge of collapse. The man held himself stiffly erect in the chair, and a light sheen of sweat had popped out on his bald head.

  “Mac is supposed to be carrying around all the answers in his head, is that it?” Highnote said. “Sanderson seems to have built a pretty convincing case. Trouble is how do we get to him before anything else happens.” Highnote looked away for a moment. “Could it be another trap? Lure him out of hiding and gun him down when he shows up?”

  “No,” Van Skike said flatly.

  “I’ve been telling you that he was innocent from the beginning. No one would listen, and now a lot of good men are dead because of it. God only knows what else he’ll do if he’s pushed.”

  “Can you find him for us, Bob?” Van Skike asked after a moment. Highnote turned back. “Yes, I can,” he said. “But certainly not n time to do the President any good with his news conference today.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Not exactly, but I have a fair idea.”

  “Where?”

  “He’s gone to ground, Van, as I knew he would. But I’ll find him or you, only I can’t guarantee how he’s going to react. He’s got to be gun-shy by now.” Van Skike had become more of an administrator and a politician over the past years, than a spy master. The question of whom to trust ad always been uppermost in his mind; his technique however had began to slip with age.“They don’t think Don Harman was working alone,” he said. “Of course not.”

  “Besides his Russian contact, whoever it is, they think he might have had help right here in the Agency.”

  Highnote’s eyes were wide. He sat forward. “Is that what Sanderson told you?”

  Van Skike nodded. His stomach was burning. “Drop everything else. I want you to give this your undivided attention.”

  “Who is it, Van?” Highnote asked softly. “Do they have a suspect? 1 Can we nail the bastard ourselves before Sanderson and his head hunters get any further?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. It may be nobody. They might just be guessing. I hope so.”

  After a beat Highnote got to his feet with some difficulty. “I’ll get on it immediately. But I’m telling you one thing, Van.”

  “Yes,” Van Skike asked looking up.

  “I’m not turning him over to Sanderson. I just won’t. If and when I can get to him, I’ll try to bring him in myself. Once we can get the situation stabilized, we can let the Bureau question him.”

  “And the woman,” Van Skike said as Highnote reached the door. “Her too.”

  It was a few minutes after seven in the morning when the Air Canada flight touched down at Frankfurt Airport, McAllister and Stephanie traveling under their real names, were among the first to get off the plane. He felt naked traveling like this, so openly, but the passport officers barely gave them a second glance, even though they didn’t look like their passport photographs.

  “The purpose of your visit to Germany, sir?”

  “Tourism,” McAllister said.

  “How long will you be staying in the country?”

  “A week, perhaps a little longer.”

  The passport officer, a young stern-faced man, smiled and handed McAllister’s passport back. “Have a pleasant holiday, mein Herr.”

  “Thank you, we will,” McAllister said and he moved through the line, waiting on the other side for Stephanie to be cleared. When she was passed through they took one of the green lines for customs control of hand luggage, which was all they’d taken with them, and five minutes later were downstairs where McAllister changed some money into Deutsche marks, then booked a small Mercedes sedan from the Hertz counter for one week.

  They were in Europe. Highnote had been right that their passports had not been flagged. No one had paid them more than a passing interest. But then, this was the easy part.

  We have made great progress together, you and I. I am so very proud of you, Mac, so very pleased. He had made progress, but even now he didn’t know toward what, exactly. Stephanie had told him to rely on his instincts, and he had. They had managed to come this far without being taken, but the cost had been insanely high, and he was not proud of what
he had done; the killing, spreading death and destruction wherever he went, to whomever he made contact with. There were times, even now, when Highnote’s suggestion that it might be better if he put a bullet into his own head, seemed to be a viable option. End the pain, the struggle, finish it once and for all. But he could not do that, any more than he could turn and walk away from it. Something was driving him. It’s the business, boyo, his father would say. It gets in the blood ruining man for a regular life. It’s hard to step down with all those secrets running around in your head. For the rest of your life you would be looking over your shoulder for one of the enemies you’ve made in our career to come up behind you with your nine ounces-A Russian uphemism for a 9mm bullet to the back of the skull. Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Zebra One, Zebra Two. God help him, but he was doing just that.

  The weather across Germany was clear but very cold, a lot of snow as piled up along the autobahns where traffic ran with headlights n at speeds of eighty and ninety miles per hour. He concentrated on his driving. Ever since Montreal Stephanie had fallen strangely silent, and had put a distance between them again as she had after the incident on the train in Chicago. It was fear, he supposed. And disgust with what they had done. She had killed and so had he. What did that make them? How different from the KGB were they in the last analysis?

  By ten they had reached the city of Nurnberg where they turned south on the E6, sometimes passing through vast federal parklands, at other times passing quaint little villages and the matrix of welllaid-out farms, the land beginning to rise up toward the Alps at the foot of which lay the city of Munich, headquarters of the BND-the German Secret Service. He’d been here before, often, liaising with the Germans during his tenure in Berlin. But it wasn’t like coming to a familiar place for him this time. Everything had changed. He had changed.

  They entered Munich from the north about eleven-thirty in the morning, driving along Schwabing’s busy leopoldstrasse lined with boutiques, restaurants, galleries, bars, and artists cellars, traffic extremely heavy, the twin towers of Munich’s landmark, the Frauenkirche rising up into the clear blue sky. Following the broad, poplarlined boulevard, he went the rest of the way into the city center, passing a big parking ramp near the ornately designed Hauptbahnhof, one of the largest train stations in Europe.