“Just a little longer. Then I’ll let you go, I promise.”
“No,” she moaned.
McAllister yanked the door open. “I won’t hurt you, I swear to God I won’t.”
“What do you want?”
“Just get me out of here, that’s all I ask.”
McAllister sat directly behind Stephanie Albright as she drove. They’d crossed the Key Bridge on his instructions and headed northwest up the Washington Parkway that paralleled the river.
Once they were away from the bright city lights, he laid the gun on the seat beside him, undid his shirt and probed the wound with the fingers of his right hand. The .38-caliber bullet had entered his chest at an oblique angle a couple of inches to the left of his left breast, nicking a rib, and emerging below his shoulder blade. It hadn’t done a lot of damage, and already the bleeding had slowed to an ooze, but his entire left side was numb from his shoulder all the way down to his hip, and he felt light-headed not only from his latest wound, but from the severe blow to the back of his skull. He stuffed his handkerchief under his shirt.
He needed medical help, he needed sleep and food, but more than that he desperately needed answers.“We can’t drive around all night,” Stephanie Albright said. “They’ve got to be searching for me and this van already.”
“Just hope they don’t find us too soon,” McAllister said. “Too soon for what?” she asked, looking in the rearview mirror at him. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Not if you do exactly as I tell you.”
“Then tell me something,” she said, her voice raising. “Keep driving,” he said tiredly. He picked up the gun, and holding it on his lap laid his head back on the seat. Robert Highnote and Gloria. The two people he most trusted in the world had turned against him. They had called him a traitor, a murderer. He couldn’t get the image of Gloria’s face twisted into a grimace of hate and revulsion from his mind. It hurt him more than his wounds. You can’t trust anybody in this business, boyo. The words came back to him again. He had never understood their real significance until this moment. Despite his dangerous occupation he had led a relatively safe life. There was always Gloria, and always Langley for him to turn to for help, for comfort, for understanding, and backing. Now the very people who had loved and trusted him, meant to hunt him down and kill him.
He could run, of course. He was an expert at hiding out. Somewhere in Europe, on a Greek island in the middle of nowhere, perhaps in the Caribbean. But how long could he stay hidden? Sooner or later they would catch up with him. If the Agency or the KGB wanted it badly enough they would find you. Too many people knew his habits, knew more importantly his failings. The old sage of the Company, Wallace Mahoney, had once lectured at the Farm that”.. by your tradecraft shall you be known.” Like so much in the Agency, the litany once learned dominated your life.
In Washington were the answers. But to whom could he turn now? In this business you can’t trust anybody… unless it’s someone without an axe to grind.
But he needed answers, which meant he needed someone who knew what?
He was drifting. His brain making associations, rejecting connections. Passing over names and places and dates.
Janos Sikorski. He was the man with the answers. He sat forward. “We’re going to Reston.” She looked at him again in the rearview mirror. “Reston?”
“It’s on the way to Dulles.”
“I know where it is,” she said. “Why Reston? What’s there?”
“Answers,” he said. “I hope.”
“You’re crazy,” she snapped. Her fear was being replaced by anger. “Why don’t you let me take you to Langley?”
“Because someone is trying to kill me.”
“Your wife included.”
“Yes,” McAllister said softly, the pain intensifying. “Just drive me to Reston.”
“Then will you let me go?”
“We’ll see.”
Sikorski’s house was actually a large cabin at the end of a long dirt road outside of Sunset Hills southeast of the town of Reston. It took them nearly an hour in the darkness to find the place. McAllister had only been here twice before. Once with his father about fifteen years ago, and a second time six years ago when Sikorski had retired from the Agency and he’d had the crowd up for what he called a “go to hell” party.
He’d come out of Poland in the summer of 1939, a couple of weeks before the Nazi invasion, where he’d set up shop with some of the other emigres who were working with the British SIS. After the war he’d gone into semi-retirement-he’d had enough guns and fighting and killing to last ten lifetimes. But he’d been recruited in the late forties into the fledgling CIA by McAllister’s father. For twenty-five years he had run the Agency’s Records Section with an iron hand and a razor-sharp mind. It was said that whatever Sikorski didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing. McAllister hoped it was true.
“What is this place?” Stephanie Albright asked nervously as they bumped slowly down the very dark, very narrow lane. The trees grew very close on both sides of the road here, forming a canopy overhead.
“Turn off your headlights,” McAllister ordered. He’d seen a flash of light at the end of the road. “What?”
“Goddamnit, turn off your headlights. Now!“ She did as she was told, the road disappearing in front of them. She stabbed the brakes hard, bringing them to a sudden halt. “I can’t see anything.”
McAllister could. About fifty yards farther down the road he could just make out the dim lights from the cabin. This was close enough. There was no telling who could be waiting for him.
“Shut off the engine.”
“What?” she cried, suddenly alarmed. Her face was twisted into a mask of fear. McAllister brought the Walther over the back of the seat, pressing the barrel against her cheek. “I’m tired of arguing with you. Shut off the engine!”
“I don’t want to die here like this,” she moaned. “Nor will you if you do as I say,” McAllister said. “There’s a cabin at the end of this road. Someone is there who I have to talk to. We’re going to get out and walk down to it. Together. Now shut off the engine and give me the keys, and I promise I won’t hurt you.”
“Oh, God… oh, God…” she sobbed, but she did as he told her.
McAllister pocketed the keys, opened the side door and got out.
At first he nearly collapsed, and he had to lean against the side of the van for support until he got his balance. Stephanie Albright was staring at him through the window.
He opened the door for her, and when she got out she stumbled against him, until he took her arm and together they started down the dirt road.
Sikorski’s cabin was located in a narrow clearing at the edge of a steep wooded hill. In the distance to the north they could see the lights of the town of Reston. It was a scenic spot. An old Chevrolet pickup truck was parked at the side of the house beneath a carport. A light was on in the kitchen, the rest of the place was in darkness. McAllister angled across the driveway to the opposite side of the cabin where he’d spotted the telephone line coming in. Reaching it, he yanked the wires out of the small junction box. Whatever happened next, help could not be so easily summoned.
Around front McAllister knocked on the door and then stepped aside, shoving Stephanie Albright forward. “If he asks, tell him that you’ve come from the Agency. There are some questions.”
Moments later the front light came on. The door opened and Janos Sikorski was standing there. He was an old man, at least in his early seventies, with long, startlingly white hair, slack blue-gray skin that hung like a hound dog’s pelt around his neck and jowls, and broad, coal-black eyes. He was dressed in an open-collar white shirt and iron-gray workman’s trousers, slippers on his feet. “Hi-ho, my luck has just taken a bloody big turn for the better,” he hooted, his accent, even after all these years, Polish, but his expressions British.