He drove down the line of planes and around the international terminal, finally angling across the tarmac to where the domestic flights were serviced as the sun began to lighten the eastern sky in a grayish-pink haze. Getting out of the international terminal without going through customs would have been impossible for him. Only his apparent status at this moment as a ground crewman intent on some airport business allowed him to cross the ramp without being stopped and questioned. Nevertheless it wouldn’t be very long now before the entire airport would be closed. Unless he got out before that happened he would be stuck here, and slowly but surely the noose would be tightened and he would be taken.
Washington. The answers were in Washington, and so was his safety. Home base. The free zone where he could surround himself with friends who knew and understood that he of all people could not be a traitor or a murderer. Once he was allowed to tell his side of the story, Langley would understand. But what story was it he could tell them? About the rambling9 of a vodka-crazed old bitter Russian? A former KGB officer? Or, of his own interrogation under torture and drugs? There were, in reality, no concrete answers he could give them. Nothing solid other than the fact the Russians had suddenly let him free with no apparent motive. Even more sirens were converging on the international terminal as McAllister parked the service cart in a row of others and hurried through Piedmont Airline’s baggage area and out into the passenger terminal, nearly deserted at this hour. No one saw the ground crewman in white coveralls enter the men’s room, nor did anyone notice the tall man in civilian clothes emerge moments later and head for the main concourse and the taxi ranks outside.
He was going to have to get down to Washington. To safety. Some sort of a message had been sent from Moscow to Langley: McAllister was the mark, kill him at all costs. He mustn’t be allowed to live.
But by whom? And why?
The Soviets had not returned his gun, of course, but they had been meticulous in returning his passport, wallet, credit cards, a few hundred dollars in American currency, and other things just before he had been handed over to Carrick and Mass at Sheremetyevo. The cabby dropped him off in front of Eastern Airlines at LaGuardia Airport in plenty of time for him to ditch the gun he had taken from Carrick’s body, and then purchase a roundtrip on the eight o’clock shuttle to Washington’s National Airport, with a return on the five o’clock shuttle under the name G. Thompson. A one-way ticket would have been a dead giveaway to the first inquiries the FBI undoubtedly would begin making this morning. It was just one more bit of tradecraft designed to buy him a little extra time. A couple of minutes before he was to board, he found a pay phone just down the corridor from the gate and direct-dialed his house in Georgetown. Bill locey had told him that Gloria was back in the States. He assumed she had reopened their house.
He let it ring ten times before he hung up. If Langley believed that he was a traitor, they might have isolated her either in an Alexandria safehouse, or possibly even down in Williamsburg at the Farm. Nevertheless, he would have thought they’d have placed a monitor on his phone line with automatic switching to bring all incoming calls out to Langley. Nothing that had happened to him since his arrest seemed to add up. He thought with a twinge that by now Gloria would have been informed that something was wrong. What exactly had they told her, and how she had taken the news was bothersome. Their marriage wasn’t on the strongest of grounds, though they had both been trying very hard to make it work. They wanted different things; it was as simple and as terribly complex as that. She wanted Washington on a regular basis, and he wanted… what? Exactly what was it he wanted?
He glanced down the corridor as the first boarding call for his flight came over the speakers. Maybe he didn’t know what he wanted. Maybe he never would. And part of the problem was that she couldn’t stand his searching.
He picked up the telephone and started to dial a second Washington number, but then decided against it and hung up. In the last analysis, boyo, you can’t trust anyone in the business, he’d been told. Which is too bad, because people like us need and demand just that; a trust in something or short of that, a trust in somebody. But not over the telephone lines, he decided. He would have to tell his story face-to-face so that he could gauge reactions from the other man’s eyes. Other men, he corrected himself. How many were there whom he could trust? One, two, a handful? No more than that. But would they believe him? Could they possibly believe him against the weight of evidence that had already been built against him?
Traitor. Murderer. You’ve gone over to the other side. Not an uncommon failing. It was the business that did it in the end. Turn a man, make him sell out his country, take his secrets from him, and on your side of the border he is a hero, but back home he is a traitor. What did that do to such men, and more important at this moment, what did such work do to the agent runner? How did it warp their sense of right versus wrong, of justice, of fair play?
McAllister ran a hand over his eyes. He was sweating slightly, even though the corridor was chilly. The effects, still, of the drugs he’d been given during his captivity, or something else? Fear? Confusion? Shame?
We’re — king progress and I feel very good about it. And so should you. We have finally broken down the first barrier… really quite excellent. You have been cooperative… Mac.
Bits and pieces of Miroshnikov’s words came back to him, like gentle whispers in the darkness, like water moving softly on a sand beach. Frightening and yet oddly comforting. They were reassurances from a source that should not have provided him assurances.
God, what had happened to him in Moscow? What was happening to him now? What did they want? Why him? McAllister stepped away from the pay phone, realizing that the boarding-gate area which had minutes earlier been filled with passengers was now empty except for the airline clerks, one of whom was looking up the corridor toward him. Another, behind the counter, picked up the telephone.
“This is the final boarding call for Eastern’s shuttle service, 1411, to Washington, D.C.,” the clerk’s amplified voice came from the speakers in the ceiling. “Passengers holding confirmed reservations, please board now.”
The answers were in Washington. Pulling his ticket and boarding pass out of his pocket, he hurried down the corridor to the gate. His answers were there, if he could survive long enough to find them.
His flight touched down a few minutes after nine, and twenty minutes later he was heading up the Washington Parkway, in heavy traffic in a rental Ford Escort, the day bright and warm in contrast to Moscow, the city with her parks and monuments gleaming green and white, and at this distance clean and somehow safe. This was the capital. Home base. The reason for his existence, for his life, in fact.
He had decided that whoever was trying to stop him, for whatever reason, would not suspect that he would run here, and so he openly rented a car in his own name. For the moment speed would be more effective than stealth.
Robert Highnote.
McAllister’s mouth was dry, his stomach rumbled and his peripheral vision was still slightly blurry from the cumulative effects of the drugs, the lack of sleep, and the lack of decent food. But he understood his tradecraft at a deeper, instinctual level; covering his tracks, making the proper moves at the proper times, knowing when to hesitate and when to act, were almost like knee jerk reactions to him. Before he approached his old friend, mentor and boss, he needed to know the extent of the Agency’s concern over him.